Blogonomics: The Blog You Can't Link To

Megan McArdle finds a listing for what has to be one of the most depressing blogging gigs in the world:

Dow Jones Newswires is seeking an editor to join its equity markets team and mine publishable scoops and intelligence from the world of blogs... The editor's main responsibility will be funneling short, spirited and well-written items into "Market Talk" - effectively Dow Jones Newswires' running blog on corporate and market developments.

The key word here is "effectively". 'Cos when I went looking for this "running blog" (that's as opposed to, what, a walking blog? a swimming blog?) it was nowhere to be found. It would seem that "Market Talk" is really just a newswire page, with (one assumes) links to pages on the Web. Which in turn means that this is an entirely unidirectional blog: you can link to anyone you like, but no one can link back to you. No links or comments from people you admire, no taking part in the conversation, no ability to even give out a URL where your "running blog" can be found.

But wait, it gets better:

There will also be the opportunity to write about developments at prominent blogs and trends in blogging.

A story about blogging which doesn't appear online is about as close as you can come, in the blogosphere, to a tree falling in a forest with nobody hearing it.

I would hope that anybody interviewing for this job would make it a cast-iron precondition of accepting the gig that Market Talk gets an online presence, complete with full RSS feed. But I suspect that anybody desperate enough to interview for this job will be in no position to set any conditions at all. And Dow Jones will go blithely on, thinking that they're somehow in touch with the econoblogosphere.

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