With 6 billion speakers, who is listening?

It seems like only yesterday that I started this Weblog, although I had pondered it for quite some time. As someone trained in "mass" communication, I wondered about having endless content. When I go to the New York Times, I know what I am getting. Yes there are scandals, but over the course of time, I know the system of checks and balances in place. That is not so online, where you get idiots such as Matt Drudge.

The latest humorous example of the endless content on the Web came online today in my daily update from Advertising Age magazine. It seems that advertisers are having second thoughts about advertising where users control content. Nothing would stop you, for example, from seeing a Nike ad on a Weblog or on a message board and instantly leaving a post wherein you decry Nike's exploitation of child labor.

Just weeks after angering me by trying to strongarm publications to cancel ads if they publish negative editorial content, advertisers face a far worse fate in the multi-author world. In the race to be part of the trendy reaches of ever "new" media, advertisers may be too far afield. Call the press "liberal," hold up Jayson Blair as a poster child, or just generally blast the 24-hour news cycle, but there's something to be said for familiarity with a source!