Couple of links saying essentially the same thing:
1. Jason sort of retires from blogging, in a poorly constructed post that could take lessons from Dan Lyons. Replaces with email list.
2. Mathew Ingram weighs in and says he believes Jason thinks (note the implicit slam against the idea of one way communication, something anathema apparently):
If anything, an email newsletter is a step backwards into megaphone and pulpit land; which makes sense, I suppose, since I have a hunch Jason much prefers the one-way pulpit to the two-way blogosphere.
3. Dave Winer takes on crowd sourcing in his usual way, making the point that it's still individuals who matter (more or less).
In some ways all these speak to the same thing -- there is too much bubble talk (that is, people who live in the bubble talking to others who live in the bubble) and in many cases missing much of what is happening in the rest of the world. I'm not dissing the bubble -- but the real impact is when an idea or technology pierces the bubble and moves onward and touches all the non early adopters and gets used and changed by masses of people, not the 1m or so who might be twittering or friendfeeding or secondlifing or facebooking or (insert buzz of the day). So my reaction to the first post was, meh. Jason is a smart dude, he'll find lots of ways to communicate about what he's doing. To the second, of course I think in the communications panoply, there is most certainly a place for one way communication. It's a tool and is neither good nor ill. And for Dave, I'm with you on this point.