Jason Calacanis has decreed that blogging isn’t a personal enough a medium for him, and wants to use an email list to stay in contact with his friends and close associates.  Quoth the ultimo mahalo

“I’m going to try and build a deeper relationship with fewer people … acoustic, something more authentic and something more private. Blogging is simply too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that drew me to it”

It may well be that Jason’s tired of a great many things in blogging, perhaps, namely the necessity to put something down that’s original and cogent in a consistent fashion (something that I have been sorely lacking for a great number of months), that’s not merely Mahalo link pimping.

And if that’s the case — fine.

But let me join the chorus of doubters, nay-sayers, and “haters” (who Jason calls out on as a ‘reason’ to stop blogging) in calling BullShit on his “official” reason, above.

There is no way, in anyway shape or form, that an email list is *more* personal and *more* intimate than blogging.  An email list is wonderful for any number of things, but just like Jason’s desire to limit comments when and where he feels like it — and I totally agree with Mat Ingram on this one — its more of a pulpit than anything else, where, like “old” or “traditional” media, you tell people what you think, and they may or may not reply.

You might or might not, in truth, reply back, and its up to you whether you publish any replies.  The “audience”, as it were, never gets privvy to the conversations unless *you* decide to publish them.

And in my mind there’s nothing more traditional and *less* intimate for the audience than that.  I agree — it might be getting back to Jason’s roots (at the Silicon Alley Reporter, a traditional magazine) — but there’s no logical way that it is a better tool for getting closer to people.

If Jason were really bugged by the haters (of which I really think there are few), the link baiting accusations, the Techmeme chasing and so on — then all he has to do is ignore it.

Yet, in truth, Mr. Calacanis hasn’t been in the thick of things for such a long time, its hard to believe that he’d still be sensitive to it.

But heck … I guess giving a story like *that* is better than saying “I’m tired of linking to Mahalo all the time as an excuse for a blog”, isn’t it?

Also: shout out to Jim Kukral for animating the dead corpse of a meme on “a-listers are they dead, yet?” (and the answer, of course, is actually “no” :)

There’s an oldish (interesting what passes for “old” in blogging time) study that was released two weeks ago, which surveyed a whole bunch of American journalists over their attitudes on blogs, and more importantly, how they interact with them.

Have you ever wondered if mainstream journalists are reading blogs?  Ever wonder if they’re appropriating the fresh, new, and fast ideas amongst bloggers on various issues and incorporating them into their work?  … perhaps without crediting their sources?

It would be easy to do, after all.  Bloggers live in a 24/7 world where amongst certain niches, bloggers live to break stories.  There are no boundaries between when we “work” and when we “stop” working.  And if you’re publishing for a deadline the next morning, it would be easy to not only scan the meaty news, and then search blogs for the “angle”, or interesting opinion on the story.

Do journalists do this?

Well, data says they really might.

According to the study, more than half of them read blogs between every day and 2-3 x per week; furthermore, more than half of them rated blogs as being “very useful” to “somewhat” useful for getting good angles on stories and gaining insight into the tone of the discussion.  Just over 50% also admitted that blogs and social media had a significant impact in the potential editorial direction and tone of a piece.

Pretty interesting stuff, no?

I mean, the next time I read a piece where the blogosphere might have several opinions (perhaps breaking even breaking the news on said piece), I know that I’ll be wondering how many uncredited bloggers (A-list or no) that piece is sourcing.