I think your point about “gated communities” is important. For me the power of blogging is the interaction. I’m OK if my comments are relegated to lesser status than the post, but I don’t want them moderated or deleted because they don’t jive with the blogger’s world view.

I would agree, tentatively, that the “regurgitation process” may facilitate—as schoolmarmies say–the flow of information and news, as long as blogger X adds some commentary or criticism to the original writing, credits the source, adds a good link, etc. On the bigger blogs sources are usually credited, but many out in the wasteland of Blogspot simply spam writing in without adding the requisite info; in effect, regurgitation then starts to resemble a type of plagiarism. That’s probably not that big of an issue in informal contexts, but it could be an issue with certain sorts of writing (research writing, or copyrighted material, “creative writing”).

The info-regurgitators (“my name is Horatiox and I am an info-regurgitator”) can also provide a worthy service by fact-checking writers (or scholars), and may call into question disputed points or evidence. That may be more effectively done on blogs than with traditional journalism: that is, assuming the J-Edgar.coms (whether GOPer or Dem) don’t succeed in shutting down dissent and free inquiry. At the same time, reasoned dissent by Joey Turnipseed in Omaha, however eloquent, doesn’t have nearly the power of any celeb-scribbler du jour featured by the Huffington Post (one of blogland’s most tightly moderated sites). If the big blogs like HuffPo and Daily KOS are any indication, blogs will probably become the online equivalent to gated communities. Slate too has steadily become more moderated over the last few years: the Fray was once quite a wild and entertaining place, and the regurgitators often engaged directly with the Slate writers. That interaction seems to have been toned down considerably.

Nora