I don't think Rago has spent much time on blogs or he'd know that several specialize in, and are very good at, taking on complex topics that the mainstream media barely skim.

A response to the WSJ editorial.

[ Not bad, and I'm glad someone who writes for a news paper, someone on the inside, as it were, felt as I did.

Of course, I believe it's not just the internet that makes modern employees of news organizations lose it... I think they're largely either uninterested in or incapable of practicing good journalism. I give a lot of leeway as to why -- as I've said, I'm of the mind there's a lot of institutional pressure to spin a certain way and I blame that for a lot of problems we see.

The fact that the news media harped on Lieberman's false (and horribly petty) attack on Lamont isn't really proof to me that reporters don't get this newfangled interweb thing, but just one more incident in which sensationalism trumped responsibility. "Lieberman doesn't buy enough bandwidth" isn't going to sell ads. "Democrat Lamont Accused of Hacking" will.

Someone like Rago might argue that that issue got blown up because the blogs all jumped on it so fast, which reinforced the MSM and generated that feedback loop. Or perhaps blame the fact that blogs put unnatural pressure on news organizations to publish faster so they can keep up with competition.

Too bad, I say. If you want to be seen as purveyors of reasoned analysis and verisimilitude, then spend the extra time, and do it right. People will respect that. Joining the mob isn't going to work. -k]

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Rich Miller :: Pundits lose grip on reality when dealing with the Internet

] Apple's attorney Riley countered by saying that free
] speech protection applied only to legitimate members of
] the press and not to website publishers. Freedom of the
] press was for the press, meaning the traditional media,
] he said.

The judge ruled in favor of Apple without explanation.

[ Pretty computers. Really dick lawyers in a lot of cases. This is kind of a serious loss of points for them in my book. -k]

Bloggers not protected by Constitution, says Apple

There are memes, and then there are Memes. Said another way: All memes are created equal, but some memes are more equal than others.
...
It is hoped that with gold stars and sticky bits, we can dramatically reduce the occurrence of missed excellence within the MemeStreams community.

On The Relative Importance and Urgency of Memes, and a Modest Proposal

] So context-free is the media environment that this
] ultimate act of participatory democracy was twisted to
] seem a left-wing plot. In the article, all exculpatory
] evidence had to come in the form of quotes from the
] Herseth campaign: "But a Herseth campaign official
] scoffed at the charge, saying the Web page is not secret
] and can be found easily with a standard search of the
] Internet." The journalist couldn't say that the charge
] was bogus, even though it was obviously bogus. He had to
] say that the other side said the charge was bogus. He
] couldn't even report the results of his own Google
] search.

[ This is a good read, and not too long. We're experiencing the teething pains, if you will, of a new media environment. The traditional media formats suck... they claim objectivity when they're either clearly biased or else so scared of being accused of bias that they publish "stories" completely devoid of insight or depth.

People have begun to prefer to get their information from outlets whose biases are transparent and well known, because it's so much easier today to aggregate many, many points of view on any topic or meme, and get your "fair and balanced" by individually reading a whole bunch of sources.

On the specific topic at hand, I didn't even really think Kos' statement was that horrifying, just a little too angry in how he phrased it. But that's because I've been reading long enough to know his background and where he's coming from and, like any of my realworld friends, I can filter what he meant out of what he said, and I can forgive moments of indiscression. I certainly recognize that anyone publishing to a large audience should probably be politic in their phrasing, but then, that sort of unabashed punditry is why blogs are so much more interesting than mainstream media. When someone takes a strong stand, or makes a powerful statement, you, the reader, are forced to react to it, to actually think about the statement and reach a conclusion. When people rely on the mass media outlets of today, they're left absorbing talking points whose authenticity is taken as unassailable.

The long term result has to be that people will engage the media and learn to form their own opinions from many different data points, rather than blindly trusting CNN or FOX or Reuters to define the truth. Truly I hope to see a time when people move beyond their blipvert addiction and start paying attention. -k]

Webblogs and the political scandal industry

A CNN Political analyst has called weblogs the Liberal answer to Conservative talk shows.
...
The study draws a very different conclusion about the democratic bias then this commentator. They think its because the democrats have a primary this year. They seem to believe that if the U.S. had a democratic president the net would be swarming with republicans. I'm not sure I agree that its that simple.

[ This is an interesting meme that's been floating around for a little while. It definitely seems to me like the majority of the organized blogging on the internet is left of center. I've spent some time trying to figure out why myself, and the first possible conclusion i came to is that my own bias is leading me to sites that trend my direction. That seems less and less likely anymore, now that other people and studies are showing the same kind of left orientaion. I thought it might be because the sort of people able to entertain a dialog online must be somewhat more open minded, which i think seems to be a hallmark of the left more than the right, in general.
Anyway, whatever reason, you can bet that the righties won't let it stay that way forever. Expect a sizable influx of conservative blogs to pop up and try to monopolize the mindshare. Unless they're somehow not wired to succeed in the diverse and chaotic sea that is the internet. -k]

Daily Kos || Weblogs are the liberal answer to talk shows.

simply stunning.

[[ MemeStreams ]] Phsyco dosent even begin to explain the things I do!!!!!!!!!!! j/k