Michael Malone must be breathing some kind of vapors at these blog conferences he’s attending.

Because he sure got feisty about Forbes, his former employer, taking certain blogs and blogging practices to task in their recent cover story. See Malone’s piece here.

My first reaction to his diatribe was, “Well, I guess you showed them for never being invited back to Forbes on Fox!”

But I see two things wrong with it. First, the Forbes story cited legitimate instances of unfair practices by certain blogs (I know one of the firms cited that were wronged by this ilk), and it sends a needed warning signal about a dangerous lack of accountability; it does not put down the entire blogopshere.

Secondly, how can Malone equate his estimate of 200,000 “serious” blogs out there to dot-com startups, in his comparison to the last boom? How many of them even have a business plan — or, hello, a business model? Maybe 200? (20?) To say that blogs are somehow now the next economic boom is a real stretch. Sure, they’re setting the media business, where he lives, all a-flutter.

But the next big boom? Michael, you need to get outside and take in a big…breath…of…fresh…air.

I read an interesting quote the other day. It’s from Lockhart Steele, managing editor of Gawker.com, which recently was listed as the 13th most popular blog by Technorati.com, drawing more than a million visitors a month:

“The whole idea of blogs being the future of media — I think frankly that’s a total joke. Blogs exist, in large part, because people have jobs that they are bored with.”

Well, what about people that don’t have a boring job? For me, there isn’t enough time in the day as it is to do all the fun, challenging things my job calls for. So, I sure hope I’ll have the time to do justice to this blog. My online life already includes managing three web sites (no, four — no, wait…), not to speak of reading and sending hundreds of emails a day. Oh, and then there’s my offline life.

In fact, as someone who writes thousands of words a day, I’d have to say this is the single biggest reason I haven’t launched a blog since first considering one in ’98 or ’99, back when I began doing a lot of sideline reporting on Internet conferences. I’ve held off all this time simply because I didn’t think I could do a blog justice; essentially, the time factor. My life was exciting enough.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some people for whom blogging is an integral part of their job — because it fits so well with their individual or organizational mission. In fact, for some folks I know, their whole professional life revolves around their blog. That’s great — more power to them.

But that’s not everybody.

What some would call the ugly side of all the blog hype is the fact that millions of people start blogs that go nowhere. If you look far enough into published blog research, you’ll see a big percentage of the 20 million blogs out there (or whatever the latest Technorati number) are “dead air.” That was the term the Wall Steet Journal’s “Numbers Guy” used to describe them a while back in his piece that examined blog statistics. That is, they’re either abandoned or haven’t been updated in months. Yet, this reality is hardly ever mentioned in the media.

Whatever, I just hope my blog won’t share the same fate. If it does, I promise to at least take it down.

But I’m getting away from my original intent in posting the quote above. What do you think about this notion? Do you have a boring job? Are blogs so popular because the bored-and-unchallenged sector of the populace is growing?

Just what the world needs: another blog with a readership of one.

If a new blog falls in the forest, does anybody read it?
Well, I am, anyway (until I get bored with it).