Persons (like us) who blog need attention. And those who comment at blogs need attention also.

Media keeps opening itself to the public, but for bloggers that’s not enough.

Bloggers think media is missing something, something they can provide.

But they don’t provide anything.

Journalists and their organizations, in Fort Wayne anyway, are mediocre, but they do provide news and are adept at gathering hand-outs from establishment structures.

We’ve never experienced many real scoops by local media, or much insight that enhances our lives or helps us cope with the mundane world of Fort Wayne.

But the Fort Wayne blogosphere hasn’t developed at all into sources for news and information.

Fort Wayne blogs provide a platform for a few malcontents and attention-needing citizens who rant or opine but rarely, if ever, give forth information that moves this city into areas of introspection and correction of its flaws.

Take Mitch Harper’s blogs for instance.

Harper is a man in great need of attention and he uses ever avenue open to him to get that attention, whether it’s political or personal.

And those who visit his blog are attention seekers also, or self-promoters, as is Harper.

Councilwoman Goldner is one of them, as is Kevin Knuth, and other bloggers who hope to drive visitors to their output.

But the content of Harper’s blog is mostly an amalgam of purloined material from legitimate media.

And responses to that material are often, almost always, irrelevant and devoid of substance.

Harper, along with a slew of other bloggers (listed on the left side of Harper’s blog-screen), would wish to be seen and heard but real media eschews them, rightfully.

Real media, despite the current rush to incorporate the hoi polloi into their oeuvre, strives to provide information (and some entertainment) to its readers and viewers, or in the case of radio, to its listeners.

Bloggers just hope to be recognized, that’s all.

Bloggers don’t inform or enlighten, no matter how much they think they do. The hubris of bloggers is great, and pathetic at the same time.

If we want news or (fairly) accurate news of the day, we’ll watch WANE or 21Alive, and grab the morning paper. (The afternoon paper is merely an entertainment for readers nowadays.)

We skim the Fort Wayne blogosphere, not for content but to see who is commenting, to see whom we should avoid in the political and business world hereabouts.

The commenter are not legion, just a few actually, so our list of persons to eschew is as limited as the blogs we usually scan.

The reason we fixate on Harper’s blog comes from his intent to replace real media, or “old media” as he is wont to call it.

Harper has always wanted to be a “media person.” He use to call or write us with avid complaints about some media malfeasance.

And while his blog doesn’t have the cachet that his former rants had, the blog does try to insinuate itself into the media world by trying to scoop local media.

Unfortunately for Harper, his idea of a scoop is finding something online and posting it before real media’s time-line and deadlines allow them to.

The stilted content of Harper is matched by the insane ramblings of other local bloggers, named and reviewed at our Blogwatch web-site.

The point here is that Fort Wayne media – the televison news stations, newspapers, and magazines are not going to be done in by the likes of a Harper, who hasn’t a clue how to dig out a story or how to present it in ways that aren’t boring or derivative.

Fort Wayne reporters do, sometimes, leave their desks to get facts and figures to flesh out their stories.

This doesn’t happen as often as we’d like, but it is part and parcel of the media routine, especially with TV reporters who need to get to locales with their photogs, to capture a sense of context.

(Newspaper reporters don’t do this so much anymore, often sending a photographer out for any needed picture while the writer uses his or her phone for gist.)

Harper and his blogging colleagues sometimes get a snapshot for their content, but the content is so irrelevant that blog copy is a masturbatory attempt at news.

So, journalists and media generally, don’t mimic the blogosphere by trying to incorporate the great unwashed masses into your news stories or on-air presentations.

Just provide news -- facts figures, information that counts – and leave the flummery to Harper-types, where ego is everything and news is a thing better left to professionals.