The latest incarnation of the debate is between Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion and Jason Salas. Micropersuasion does exactly what it says on the tin... persuades with brief, timely & relevant posts that point to relevant sources. The bulk of the value is in Steve's judgement as an editor. If he links to it, it is surely worth a look. Jason Salas now agrees:

I used to loathe on principle these "groupie blogs", a moniker I attached to the segment of the blogosphere where they authors don't really develop any thoughts or theories of their own, merely replicating material based around one or more central themes. No creation, just regurgitation. And the same certainly exists for a certain portion of podcasters, v-loggers, digital photogs, et al.

Already knowing Steve's reputation as a public relations guru (but ignorant to his new media advocacy), I perused his blog more thoroughly I noted that the guy's work is pretty eclectic - relevant, timely, topical, insightful, useful and interesting. I've since been a permanent subscriber and fan of his work.

And then it hit me: to judge a user's blogging style and behavioral posting patterns by traditional writing standards is unjust. Today's world is all about the quality and timeliness of content, therein laying the true value: this is new age reporting at its best, making for the perfect aggregation of focused content.

So - 2 kinds of bloggers, 2 kinds of blogs? or is there a third way?

Now that Freshblog knows what it is about, I find that my behavior in this respect is different. I used to be exclusively a linker, & I used to be a buzz-linker too... only really linking to stuff that the rest of the blogosphere was into as well. I was the worst kind of groupie-blogger, & followed the herd at a respectful distance. Now, I'm both a linker and a thinker. I think occasionally, & produce extended posts when my thoughts are somewhat original or when I think they'd be more broadly useful. The rest of the time I write brief posts that link to relevant or exciting material on other blogs. The difference between the links of yesteryear & the links of today is that they're topically relevant. This site has a focus that guides my link selection. Sometimes I wear an editor hat, & sometimes an author hat!!

Enough navel-gazing. The point that I want to make is that linking & thinking can co-exist productively with a solid topical focus. Here's to the happy medium!! Blog on!!