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Bloggingheads.TV
Here is one excerpt, Henry Farrell and Megan McArdle, of course it is free. Being a long-time fan of Harold Innis, I cannot help but wonder which kinds of messages are favored in this medium. If print favors analysis, and TV favors storytelling, how about Bloggingheads? There are comments here. Here is Drezner and Brink Lindsey.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 15, 2007 at 04:42 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
McArdle smoked him.
Posted by: josh at Feb 15, 2007 5:52:05 PM
Frankly, the only thing I found out from this item is that McArdle is gorgeous, and leaving her picture off of her blog is a sign of cruelty rather than timidity. Except for that, I would rather have seen a transcript.
As debate goes, I much prefer the format in Reason (as the recent debate on Social Security). It is not necessary to think on your feet for either party, it is necessary to make a reasoned presentation.
It would take me about twenty times as long to view a video as to read a transcript, and the only thing the video adds is a bit of expressive nuance (who needs that in this kind of discussion?) and finding out which one is prettier (and my money would have been on McArdle sight unseen, and it is NOT why I read her blog).
Posted by: jens at Feb 15, 2007 9:57:18 PM
I am watching it from a public with no sound. The only thing I could tell at this point is that good look matters.
Posted by: Yan Li at Feb 15, 2007 10:10:39 PM
From having watched a coupla dozen (because I knew, and liked the writing of, a participant) I would say that the Blogginghead format is unproven. At any rate, it doesn't work at the moment.
Probably the technical limitations (esp lack of eye contact between debators) spoils any proper, two way interaction.
The interview format is great - of instance Econ talk, or those marvellous C-Span interviews - but debate is intrinsically harder to achieve.
Another aspect is that it is unlikely that writers will make the best blogging heads. If the medium does come to anything, it will be when specialist blog debators emerge, who can improvise and do their best work in the oral medium.
Posted by: Bruce G Charlton at Feb 16, 2007 1:31:07 AM
I think the format is not a good one. It would be better to have people discuss things solo.
I think that the one thing that this resolved for me is that there is a lot of disagreement concerning basic facts and perspective between the two. But, the discussion itself did nothing to resolve these issues.
Posted by: Viscus at Feb 16, 2007 3:07:52 AM
Robert Wright, who owns the site (I think?) and is on there often, is a smart guy. He also has that meaningoflife.tv website with interviews of Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and Maynard Smith, among others.
I enjoy watching intelligent people interact in interviews, but debate is usually tedious. Too slow, as others have said.
Bloggingheads is more thoughtful than anything on tv except maybe Cspan/booktv. It can't compete with the best blogs of course, so I watch it usually only while eating--breakfast most of the time.
Posted by: Lee at Feb 16, 2007 7:32:35 AM
I download the audio and listen in the car occasionally.
Robert Wright, in a session with Glennocide Reynolds has said that his hopes are that it would be more civil than blogging. I think the problem with that is that people like Glenn are then less likely to be called out on advocating genocide.
Posted by: theCoach at Feb 16, 2007 8:57:59 AM
I'm with Jens that text might be a preferable format. as far as MM being (very) pretty, that's long been clear.
To answer Tyler's question, it seems to me that Bloggingheads has more in common with print's analysis - or a televised panel on, say, PBS - than it does with traditional TV storytelling (which, incidentally, is what I do for a living). Television doesn't use a lot of 1st-person devices in nonfiction.
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Posted by: 謝文豪 at Apr 1, 2008 10:44:31 PM
