This is a guest post from Corey Freeman of Diligent Design as a followup to my post The Changing World of Blogging — Mainstream Still Doesn’t Get it.

Grant recently posted about how the Mainstream Media has taken over blogging. There are many people who insist that current bloggers simply give up on their current blogs, and that those with the intent to blog should not even begin. Because of the recent domination of certain “niches” (which is a terrible word for reasons I shall cover) by big blogs, the market is supposedly “cornered” in the way that taking on Fox News with your blog would be like taking on the Persians with 300 Spartans…

…But wait. That’s right, the Spartans did pretty well, didn’t they? Even if a smaller blog in a big niche doesn’t become ridiculously successful it can still make a dent and reach others. The answer isn’t in re-hashing the same old information we get on big blogs, but in expanding, creating and researching new information. Information technology is slowly degenerating into just plain old technology. There are an increasing number of “blogging tips” posts that include not using long paragraphs or even bothering with grammar, because nobody reads the entire article anyways.

(graphic from Logic+Emotion) The more the Internet evolves, the more we lose the idea of expanding on information and going in depth. Instead, the general rule is to write for everybody.

“On the Web, you don’t read. You scan. So make your articles scannable: use short sentences, short paragraphs and lists. The easier your articles are to read, the more readers you’ll get.” - Blogging Tips

However, if you’re covering a certain “nice” (there’s that word again!) then you should be writing for your audience. Because of this, there will be certain times when you should write just for the people who are obsessed or who have advanced knowledge.

Examples of this style of writing are all over the place. DoshDosh is a marketing blog that happily goes in depth on marketing techniques and the psychological side of getting visitors. Design Observer analyzes influential artists of our day and of past days and invites deep discussions on the topic. These blogs are made to engage loyal readers, not just a general audience. They are topic blogs, not niche blogs.

The word niche actually means a place or position suitable or appropriate for a person or thing. In effect, your blog is the niche. You’re not filling in a space, you’re covering a subject and creating niches of your own. The Mainstream Media is a niche for generalized, mass produced, fast information. If you need to know who won the presidential elections, or your football team won their latest game, you go to mainstream media. However, if you want a history of your football team’s performance, or in depth coverage on Obama’s economical policies, you go to a blog. This is because blogs are not constrained by the quick, dramatic, instant gratification rules of mainstream media. Blogs can be slow, in depth, and interpretive.

Do I think blogging will go the way of the PDA - in that it might become simply a component of something bigger? No. I believe blogs have the potential to be the something bigger. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that

Mainstream Media is a component of blogging.

As the information age advances, it has two choices to make. We can generalize and minimize information into chunks until there is no reason to even hear about it (imagine an all twitter mainstream media site!) or it can stay it’s course and accept that something bigger is coming in to take over. Something more specific and more developed.

Written by Corey Freeman of Diligent Design