Latest in the bloggers vs. journalists debate: Things are as ill-informed and nasty as ever. The latest volleys come from the professionals' side. Here's an assessment not to live up to:

The typical blog contains uninformed opinion about world events, or overlong posts about the weather or your uncle Bob. The typical blog is narcissistic and often focused on how to get other people to link their blogs to your blog, so that both blogs will rank higher in Google searches.

And here's another:

Bad prose, endless reams of bad prose! There's a lack of discipline, a feeling that anything that crosses one's mind is important or interesting to others. ...If bloggers want to break out of their ghetto, they've got to acquire a sense of drama and theater as well as a flair for language. Why else should anyone read them? And the Web in my view is a visual medium -- I don't log on to be trapped on a muddy page crammed with indigestible prose.

Clearly there are a lot of agendas at work. And there is, indeed, a lot of mediocrity out there in the blog world. But there is good writing, too. And if you can't find it, it's because you're not looking hard enough.