Whaddya mean we don't get to blog?

After all this time carefully nurturing interest in Web logs among skeptical reporters and editors, along comes some hotshot new media gurus who flatly declare that we of the MSM are wasting our time even attempting to do what bloggers do.

Bob Cauthorn of "Rebuilding Media" scolds "Memo to mainstream media: You don't get to blog."

Some of his tough talk:

Fact: Most major media players couldn't lose their audience faster if they were chasing them with a stick. And rather than reform and transform, major media -– in some kind of manic pratfall – responds by further exposing the public to the very same cast of characters that the audience has already rejected. Staff blogs. Wow.

Goddamned brilliant, that.

Cauthorn scores some points: Putting old media content into a blog doesn't make it a bit less insipid and irrelevant as it was in its original form.

But I don't think we are so hopelessly mired in our old media thinking that we can't pull ourselves out. It will require relearning a lot of what we think we know, but I think we're up to that. Am I living in a dream world?