As much as I want to write more about journalism and less about journalism bloggers, Journalism.me deserves some attention.
It’s a simple blog aggregator that takes most of my favorite journalism bloggers and condenses them into a single RSS feed. And yes, it is a full feed, not a partial feed.
The true brilliance of the aggregator didn’t reveal itself until after I plopped it in my Google Reader. At first, I was annoyed to see that the author of each post wouldn’t show up.
Then I thought: Wow, I love that the author of each post doesn’t show up. I love that a journalism student will have the exact same amount of preset clout as someone who’s been writing about online journalism since he first dialed up on Prodigy.
I love that good ideas will rise to the top on their own, and no one will have to achieve any kind of status to have those ideas considered. That was my main contention with the original incarnation of Dave Lee’s bashing together of young journalism heads, when he wrote that a proposed ring of twenty-something bloggers would be invitation only. No me gusta. Barriers to entry will only turn up the volume on the echo chamber.
Journalism.me chops out the promotion and personal branding and leaves only the idea. What a wonderful way to be objectively exposed to as many ideas as possible.
UPDATE 10:30 a.m.: I should have more clearly mentioned that Dave Lee has since decided to nix the invite-only idea. See the comments on this entry for details.