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As various of us try to enable and encourage weblogs and citizens media — and I’m one of those — I also try to stay mindful that we can’t ‘mold it into our image of what we think it should be. It will be what it wants to be — that’s the whole point. Now if we can help it along that path (with technology or financial support or education or attention) great. But the beauty of citizens’ media is that it is what it wants to be, not what somebody else wants it to be.
And the “what it will be” is plural, not singular, which is the most important response to those who have met the idea of the Citizen’s Media Association with scorn.
Unlike traditional media like television where essentially, all TV programming has evolved into a single standard model, weblogs and other ‘net media don’t have to — and shouldn’t. The ideas being put forth for the CMA are part of one vision of what this medium can be — but there can, and should, be a wide spectrum of different approaches to weblogs going forward.
Like the idea of having a trade association to help you? Go the CMA route. Prefer to be an anonymous blogger just chipping in your $0.02 however you feel like it with no one else to tell you what to do? Do that. The different visions don’t really have to compete; they complement…