Darren Rowse who is a great blogging advocate gently chided Time earlier today for their person of the year award. When I first read his post, I thought he had nailed it, then I thought he was a bit harsh on Time and felt compelled to post this in his comments section which I wanted to repeat here:

“You know when I first read your post; I thought Darren has nailed it. Then one commenter said you were nuts to criticize time.

A couple of points, first off far more people read Time than any blog on the planet. More than most blogs on the planet combined in fact.

Just an idea of how Big time is:

“Time Inc. magazines are read 340 million times each month worldwide by 173 million adults over18 years of age. Two out of every three U.S. adults read a Time Inc. publication every month. In the last year, about 70% of women in the U.K. read a magazine published by Time Inc.’s IPC Media unit, the largest consumer magazine company in the U.K.

Time Inc. continues to account for nearly a quarter of the advertising revenue of all U.S. consumer magazines. Time Inc. ended 2005 with three out of the top four magazines in both advertising revenues and pages. People remained the #1 magazine in advertising revenue for the 15th consecutive year. Seven of the top 25 magazines in advertising revenues in 2005 were Time Inc. titles. “

So when a traditional media magazine this big recognizes how big new media has become it is a very big deal.

As new media content creators we often forget just how small we really are compared to the whole non blogging world out there.

I repeat this often because it bares repeating. Most people I speak to when I tell them about my blog, let alone my show BlogWorld ask me “what exactly is a blog?”.

These aren’t idiots living in caves. These are professionals, smart people, computer savvy people, business leaders and most of them have no clue.

That isn’t to say new media isn’t big it is and Time magazine just told the world about it.

No matter their motivations, what Time just did was a very good thing for bloggers, and new media content creators everywhere.

So if they get a few dozen, hundred, or thousand links out of it, I say good for them.”

/apologies for quoting myself. 
Now after posting that I re-read Darren’s post and changed my opinion of his intentions. it didn’t sound as harsh the second time. Well in the process of posting this, i re-read the comments section and notice he commented saying it was a joke =p. But I wasn’t the only one to take it that way. One of his commenters threatened not to link to Time to teach them a lesson.

By the way true to the blogosphere Time whatever their motivations has just potentially given the biggest single boost to new media ever, and people who make a living creating new media, advocating new media, consulting about new media are criticizing them for it.

Nobody bites the hand that feeds them like new media.