I recently began reading a blog called The Rehearsal Studio.  The blogger, Stephen Smoliar is a writer who uses the space to “exercise ideas before writing about them with greater discipline.”

Off and on I find Smoliar riffing on the theme of “slow journalism.”  The furor that swirled around the New Hampshire primary gives multiple examples of how the need to have immediate explanations, immediate responses to any little thing that happened greatly change the signal to noise ratio through out the media, and especially in the blogosphere.  

Phrases like Rush to Judgement and Echo Chamber provide Smoliar with headline phrases.

I think that I tend to agree that we are most often missing the long view of history when we are being told what think, how to intrpret each little event, when yesterday’s polls are old news because there is a new one today, never mind that polls can go horribly wrong.

This is a case where more is not necessarily better, or even good.  Is the trend to instant gratification, immediate news, live-blogging good for us? Is the facebook / my space social networking really beneficial for the discussion of ideas or is it just another example of the Balkanization of the internet, where people who already think alike amplify each other’s opinions rather than enter into a real discussion of ideas?

I tend to re-read those writers who provide the material for contemplation rather than just a few symbolic jabs to be repeated, varied, manipulated.