Category — The Media

From Evgeny Morozov (at Foreign Policy), commenting on Sec. Clinton’s recent speech on the Internets.  Dude hits it out the park.  Money quote: [Read more →]

Following Will’s link, I went over to the Daily Caller and took a quick skim of the “Ask Matt Labash” page, only to find my very own home country being discussed. In response to the question, “Which foreign country most deserves to have its leaders removed?”, Labash offers (emphasis mine), [Read more →]

Tucker Carlson claims to be launching it. [Read more →]

I’ve argued before, and I will continue to argue, that there is nothing terribly unique about Sarah Palin as a politician other than the way in which her opponents and the media play right into her hands by treating her as if she is somehow uniquely important and/or devious.

Today, Dave Weigel documents another set of examples of this, demonstrating the ways in which the media’s (and, for that matter, Palin’s opponents’) insistence on paying attention to her Facebook and Twitter ramblings, making them into major stories, even if with the intention of disproving those ramblings.   The entire post is worth a read and does an excellent job of showing exactly how the media and some of her more vocal critics are playing right into Palin’s hands.  I especially liked this paragraph:

The problem is that Palin has put the political press in a submissive position, one in which the only information it prints about her comes from prepared statements or from Q&As with friendly interviewers. This isn’t something most politicians get away with, or would be allowed to get away with. But Palin has leveraged her celebrity — her ability to get ratings, the ardor of her fans and the bitterness of her critics — to win a truly unique relationship with the press. She is allowed to shape the public debate without actually engaging in it.

Weigel goes on to present a couple examples of this strategy in action, and concludes that Palin’s actions are “incredibly savvy,” but that the media’s response to those actions “is ridiculous, bordering on pathetic.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Again, please do read the whole thing.

Given the kerfuffle happening at The Daily Dish over Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner’s involvement in the production of the blog, I thought this interview would both be timely and of interest. I had originally planned to present the interview as a profile piece on Patrick himself, who I have understood for some time as playing a key role in the production of the Daily Dish but who, for obvious reasons, tends not to receive a ton of public acknowledgment for that work. The interview was intended as an insider look at how The Daily Dish, arguably the most popular political blog currently active, is updated on a day-to-day basis.

As it turns out, Andrew’s recent break and an off-the-cuff comment by Patrick brought the blog’s operation into focus. As such, I decided to scrap my plans for a profile piece over the holiday break and post the answers Patrick had kindly provided  as a straightforward interview. I’m doing so because Patrick went into a fair amount of detail about the production of The Daily Dish as well as his own involvement with the  blog. Anyone who has taken an interest in how Andrew is personally involved in the blog and to what degree Chris and Patrick are involved would do well to take ten minutes to read through the interview. Many questions are, I think, clarified as a result.

It’s worth noting that Patrick agreed to do the interview back in late August and the email correspondence that forms the interview took place between mid-September and mid-October, a good two months before this blogospheric controversy took shape. Patrick mentions this once or twice, but I will re-emphasize that he does not speak for Andrew Sullivan in any way throughout the course of the interview. Patrick offers insights into Andrew’s style of blogging and what it is like to be intimately involved in his blog, but the perspective offered is his own.

Finally, I’d like to take one more opportunity to thank Patrick for corresponding with me over the course of a month despite one of the blogosphere’s most harrowing schedules – his participation was both engaging and appreciated. [Read more →]

Lately I find the real distinction between old and new media most obvious when comparing blogs to op/ed columns.  Really, I enjoy Ross Douthat’s blog at the New York Times so much more than his weekly column there.  I imagine it’s also a lot more fun to write a blog than a weekly column as well.  Ross seems to have more fun on the blog.

Blogs are more visceral, more immediate, and more personal.  Columns feel stiff and confined – no matter who’s writing them.  Blogs may not be able to imitate narrative journalism.  They may not be able to capture the breadth or depth of a good long-form piece, or the hard data and real reporting of actual news stories.  But one thing they can do is make the traditional op/ed column seem awfully archaic.

Of course, blogs can’t be replicated in print. So as long as dead-tree papers are with us, we’ll have the column too.  All I know is that I wouldn’t mourn the column’s passing the way I would mourn the death of long-form narrative journalism.  There can be strength in limits, of course.  800 words can make what would otherwise be a long and rambling piece into something tight and concise.  But you can do it even better with a blog.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: this is untrammeled bullshit. Gawker media’s tiered commenting system, bannings and faux-exclusivity have nothing to do with maintaining decorum, or keeping the quality of the blogs high, or preserving a certain tone. (The idea that the tiered commenting system is designed to preserve spelling/grammar/punctuation is particularly laughable, given the near constant failures in that regard on the actual blogs.) You don’t need to look further than the absolutely rampant (and proud) misogyny of Deadspin’s comments to know that all of that is a smokescreen.

The reason for the hoops they make commenters jump through is another of Nick Denton’s despicable but highly effective innovations into blogging. Gawker blogs create a false sense of exclusivity which Gawker can then market as a kind of intangible commodity to be doled out to the credulous and needy commenters. It’s a velvet rope effect, a way for people to feel a little bit of privilege and to have an opportunity to look down at the proles, which I’m sure is almost always something denied to them in their real lives. It’s very transparent, and rather sad, and it says something terrible about the human condition both that someone could dream it up and that so many people could fall for it. But there it is.

It’s actually appropriate, given what Gawker once was– a place to vent the juvenile rage of the permanently envious, people altogether comfortable in the material ways of the world but denied the kind of celebrity, access and recognition that their upbringing has conditioned them to lust after. There was, as that n+1 piece pointed out, something noble in the openness of that jealousy and frank admission of anger in the face of a community that was not recognizing the genius of those who thought they deserved it. Those days are long gone, of course, and instead stands the relentless bullying and cruelty that Gawker now stands for. But the commenting system has become a kind of microcosm of the Manhattan that Gawker once looked on, where people strive for the ultimately worthless but in context invaluable chits of social recognition and the prized commodity of being able to look down on those who look up.

Rick Ungar has the scoop: [Read more →]

Dave Schuler goes on a fine rant against Tom Friedman’s magnificent straw man on climate legislation.

Here’s Beck on his radio show, taking the Southpark parody rather well I think. [Read more →]

John Cole began blogging at Balloon Juice way back in 2002, when he was still a die-hard Republican.  According to the FAQ on his blog, you can “check the archive to see how crazy” he was back then.  Since then his political views have shifted and the blog has grown.  The blog has also evolved from one lone blogger to four, the new co-contributors rising from the ranks of the site’s busy comment threads.

I had a chance to talk with John Cole last week about blogging and politics, and you can read the whole thing right after the leap…. [Read more →]

Via Kevin Drum it looks like nobody stuck watching CNN will have to suffer through any more of Lou Dobbs’ nonsense!  CNN still employs Nancy Grace, however, so not all is true and good and beautiful yet….