The blogging community bands together to bash David Murray

Woooeee!! There's a real pissing match going on in the blogosphere!

And the weird part of it is, the two people fighting are both my friends—Shel Holtz and David Murray. Watching two people you like fight each other is weird. It reminds me of my childhood, before my parents got divorced. Only nobody is drunk. I don't think.

Here's the story:

David recently wrote a Ragan Report column criticizing bloggers who he feels spend too much time agonizing over why people don't pay more attention to blogs.

Now, David's columns are often way over the top (which is why I like them), and this one was no exception. He throws around words like 'imbecilic' and 'hysterics.' He attacks blogger Neville Hobson for a 'nearly teary' post about the lack of activity on IABC Chairman David Kistle's blog. He says blogs don't need 'geeks like Hobson' constantly selling their benefits.

And he says that many bloggers 'behave as if blogs are the solution to world hunger.' (A recent google search revealed not one blogger saying blogs have any relationship to world hunger, in case you were wondering). You can read David's entire column here.

This column, of course, prompted noted communication expert and blogger Shel Holtz to respond—on his blog, of course. In order to describe Shel's response, let me tell you a story about a friend of mine.

This friend had a wife who was a bit of a shrew. And every time my friend would come home after a night of drinking, his wife would be waiting up. The screaming would start before my friend even opened the front door.

Well, one night, the wife focused her screaming on how much money my friend was spending in bars. Having had enough, my friend took out his wallet and carefully laid out its contents—money, credit cards, photos, receipts—on the kitchen table.

Then he calmly urinated all over all of it. Having made his statement, he then took off the rest of his clothes and passed out naked in the bathtub.

What does this story have to with the dust-up between Shel and David?

In the story above, Shel would be my friend, and David's column would be the contents of my friend's wallet. Upon reading David's column, Shel drenched David's column with a thoughtful, point-by-point rebuttal. It is probably the longest post Shel has ever written on his blog. You can read it here.

My take on it? First, I guess I admire David's cajones. If I ever disagreed with Shel on a technology-related issue (and to this point I never have), I would keep it to myself. I wouldn't debate Roger D'Aprix on strategic communication, Les Potter on communication planning, Shel Holtz on communication technology, or Wilma Mathews on media relations. You go up against those folks on their turf, and you're going to get your lunch handed to you.

Second, and more importantly, David is wrong about blogs. They are changing how people communicate. Look at this example. In the old days, David would have written his column, and anyone who disagreed with him would have had to write a letter to the editor.

Now, just an hour after he read the column, Holtz had a massive rebuttal up on his web site. So did Hobson, which you can read here. And other bloggers are linking to those posts, and David is out there commenting on the comments. And on and on.

And now I feel the need to weigh in with my blog. And someone might weigh in on this. And on and on. The column wasn't the end of the communication process. It was the beginning—and readers have every bit as much power as the original publisher of the information.

And that's where David is dead wrong. Blogs may not revolutionize the publishing world, but they will most certainly change the rules.