My cousin Adam from the Philly area is a new contributing music reviewer for a blog (ahem, web site as he would prefer) called This Is Some Scene. He did his first review on a Flaming Lips show he went to last night.

It’s cool stuff, and I’m proud of him for joining; however, he has quite an interesting perspective on the developing influence of blogs vs. the news biz.

He’s concerned about what the growth of the blogosphere–in conjunction with news sources switching to an online medium–is doing to Joe Schmoe’s ability to decipher “legitimate news sources” (in which Adam is quite cynical about already) from blogging crackpots.

In an earlier Internet age (like… 3 years ago) a lot of people read information produced online with a grain of salt, assuming if the author had any credentials at all, he wouldn’t be expressing himself on the Internet. Obviously, he’d have a newspaper column.

However! Now, news corps, big businesses, small organizations and weird dudes living in their parents’ basement eating Cheetos all are producing content in the same form. Basement dude could potentially become just as influential as NYT blogger. So how can Joe Schmoe tell what’s “news” and what’s a whole lot of BS?

Well. That’s what’s so great!

The same phenomenon that’s causing Adam’s concern also is giving This Is Some Scene the potential to become a very successful site. So far only 4 or 5 people are running it, who never would have had the opportunity to be heard if it wasn’t for the fact that crackpots (and the rest of us) have the chance to produce content and make it available.

Even better? Society judges big shots and no-names on the exact same terms.

I think blurring the lines between traditional news and blogging-nobodies is a fantastic thing. It’s quite possible that my cousin Adam is an 800 times more competent reviewer than someone from the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Now Adam can write something, we will read it and we’ll never know he’s actually a crackpot!

I mean… my lovely, wonderful cousin! :)

Anyhow. Best takeaway from our conversation? I asked him the main reason he decided to write for the blog. His response:

“Because I like music, I like writing and it’s something to do. And it might impress girls if I am at a show and I tell them that I’m ‘covering it’ for something.”

Hear, hear.