Reading both Andrew’s comments on the Atlantic’s site re-design and Ta-Nehisi Coates, I am reminded again of the importance of creating something personal with new media, that blogging is not journalism exactly, and that bloggers themselves are more rightly the “brand” in question than the publications they write for (though, in all honesty, there is and should be a mix – Coates and the Atlantic are in some sense a dual-brand, neither one the same without the other.  Same goes for all the Atlantic bloggers.)  As Andrew notes,

[A] blog is inherently a live process and conversation and anyone who actually understands blogging’s intimate relationship to its readership – and the critical importance of conversation to the endeavor – would never have dreamed of turning it into a series of headlines. That’s what worries me deeply. Not the inevitable transitional glitches but the philosophy behind it.

I think this cuts to the heart of the matter, and cuts directly to why so many people – myself included – really dislike the re-design at the Atlantic.  It’s not the aesthetic that I find so bothersome – and indeed, I don’t notice much of a change at all at Andrew’s digs – but the transformation of the other blogs into essentially archives, subsumed into the larger “channels” and thus stripped, to some degree, of their personalities.  Since the draw of these ‘voices’ has always been one of the Atlantic online’s strongest features, I find this disappointing to say the least – but like Andrew notes, it is the philosophy behind it that is most troubling.  This passage from Coates is worth reading also:

For my part, you have to understand that, to a large extent, whatever beautiful things have happened here, over the past two years, were, essentially, a fortunate mistake. What you’ve gotten is me hopping online and rather carelessly deciding to be myself, to talk to you, as much as possible, in the same way I talk to the people I know. And then basically curating the comments, banning people, deleting, and coaxing until there was a comments section that I, personally, loved reading.

It wasn’t market-tested. When I first got here, we didn’t even really have a web editor, and none of us expected this to grow into what became. We didn’t discuss whether it would be a good idea to have a post about Barry Sanders, next to a post about the Real Housewives of Atlanta, next to a series about the Civil War. We didn’t discuss commenting policy. We just kinda liked each other (me and my editors here) and decided to try something.

In short, none of this was intentional. It was all intuitive. And it’s fucked up, but it’s only as I’m writing this that I’m actually getting that that really is the point, and a big part of the draw. I kind of knew that, but it’s only in the absence of a coherent thing that I’m really seeing that.

This unintentional process is important.  There is something spontaneous and personal about blogging that is a serious if intangible change from traditional journalism. It is also, I think, the most important thing about a successful blogger – this ability for readers to connect and empathize with them. Similarly the community created around a blogger or a project is vitally important.  Jaybird has likened our own humble digs to a bar where we can all sit around and talk politics and culture and whatever over beers.  I have adopted this analogy in how I think about The League.  Indeed, I have come to think of The League as more than just a site, more than just a cadre of writers, but as a community unto itself, with all our commenters as part of the larger project.  The place would not be the same without the many commenters who liven up the threads – from Jaybird to Bob Cheeks to Michael Drew to North to greginak and so on and so forth – the list is too long to name you all. 

One of my great struggles writing elsewhere has been the lack of this relationship.  (New technical limitations have limited my own ability to respond to comments here in a timely fashion, but I do read each and every one.)  Indeed, though I am paid to write at True/Slant, I find myself devoting more time and energy to my writing here – and not just because it is a project that I helped start and continue to help shape, but because of this ongoing conversation we have gotten ourselves into – I can only frequent so many bars, I suppose, and this is my bar of choice.  (I know there is some crossover between commenters here and at True/Slant, but to be honest the comment system there is somewhat inhospitable.  And I dislike, perhaps, being just one of several hundred writers, whereas here I feel like I am part of a team, or at least a band of misfits…)  There is something organic about it that I enjoy.  I can anticipate who will be sitting where and drinking what, and who will storm out angry and who will chuckle at the antics and so forth.   And part of this is the site design, how we have worked to make the comments an integral part of this site, how we have kept the site fairly clean and ad-free, and so forth.  Perhaps it is also human nature to seek out communities (and bars) which we feel comfortable in. 

However, one of our original intentions with this site was to create a place where sustained, internal dialogue between writers, commenters, and guest-writers could be nurtured and grow into something rather unlike anything else on the interwebs.  I think, to some degree, in our push to increase traffic, to link to (and be linked by in return) Really Important Bloggers, we have let that part of our mission fall to the wayside.  I know others here have expressed a similar sense that this is the case.  Whether this has been an inevitable side-effect to creating a successful site, or to simply running out of things to talk to each other about is hard to say.  For my own part, I know that I focused a great deal on increasing traffic, on making the site as good as possible – and I admit to feeling a bit of a rush when I’d pick up a link from the Dish or get a good response from Larison or other bloggers who I had read and admired.

Either way, I wonder how the readers and commenters feel about this (not that the two groups, I hope, are mutually exclusive).  After just over a year, it’s incredible to see how far this blog has come.  We have gained and lost bloggers.  We are still (I hope, and believe) producing good, interesting, and relatively unique content.  We are still ad-free and entirely self-funded or funded by the generosity of the best damn commenters on the internet.  But have we lost some of that original vision?  Some of that original intent?  I would be interested to hear from both writers here and commenters on how, if at all, we could right the ship, reorient to bring back some of the conversational aspects of the original mission.  Make the site even better and more lasting.  We ditched the “series” function, but perhaps went too far in ditching the concept of series altogether.

In other words, this is a space to talk about blogging, this blog in particular, how it is doing things right and how it is doing things wrong, and so forth.  Thanks.

“Revolution requires a transformation of human nature so that people are capable of democracy.” – Michael Hardt, Examined Life (2008)

Last week, commenter and contributor to Grad Student Madness, Rufus, offered the following comment to my post on the inherent and historical  craziness of our modern politics,

I agree completely with the signal to noise argument here. But I’m not entirely comfortable with equating blogging with political “engagement”. It’s certainly intellectual engagement (well, at least, on occasion); but political participation is embodied, isn’t it? Or is that so 20th century? I mean, going to the town council meeting and ranting for your allotted five minutes is clearly engagement. But does that mean that posting the same rant on liberals-suck dot com is also engagement in the political process? I don’t know.

A smart comment and a useful question, to be sure. Rufus was responding to the part of the post where I said,

With the increase in noise, you get an increase in signal that results in more information being available to more people  in a more engaging fashion than ever before. It only makes sense that the din which has always attended political sparring would get all the more rancorous given the necessity of those circumstances. And if the increase in polemics indicates, at very base, an increase in engagement of average individuals in matters political, even if I happen to find that engagement, like Jason, rather tiresome at times, I’ll take it. Democracy is a messy business and it runs on the fuel of participation. Sorting through the muck that results is, frankly, part of the job of caring and ultimately the more muck the greater the potential for those singular gestures of grace.

The “on the face of it” answer to Rufus’ query is to say, no, blogging and political engagement are not the same thing. Indeed, as I suggested in my rant-post on online voting,

Don’t me wrong, I’m a big fan of the Internet, which has provided me with a means of voicing my thoughts to a much wider audience than I would have ever dreamed possible only years prior. But the Internet itself, as a tool, hasn’t made me more civic-minded. Spending time reading about issues, considering those issues and how I feel about them, speaking with other people, cultivating a greater sense of my community, and considering the relationship between my sense of self and those identities that extend into the local, regional, national, and global spheres have made me passionate about politics and my civic life.

So I think there is a real need to be careful about seeing the virtual reality of online activity is an appropriate stand-in for good old fashioned civic engagement and I don’t think that cultivating such a skepticism is, as Rufus puts it, “so 20th century”, as much as it is critical in the twenty-first century. At the same time, and getting back to the meat of Rufus’ question, neither do I think that blogging/Facebooking/etc. have nothing to do with political engagement and civic responsibility. My weekend is a good example of how this is the case. [Read more →]

It would be another sign of “insane rage” and “violent escalation of rhetoric.” And: RAAAAAAACISM.

But string up a mannequin of Sarah Palin from a rope, and it’s just all in good Halloween fun.

Well, wonder no more, Michelle, because one such effigy* was recently found in Plains, Georgia, home of 39th United States President Jimmy Carter. The reaction from the vast liberal media conspiracy? What response there has been (not a front pager, this one) has stuck to, uh, just the facts, ma’am.

Meanwhile, Instapundit author Glenn Reynolds’ proof positive image of Obama’s haughty condescension has set the blogosphere alight with speculation and debate while the Rush Limbaugh death watch has PoliGazzette’s Jason Arvak sounding the death knell for relevance, focus, and seriousness in political blogging (due exception to the League noted),

And people wonder why fewer and fewer people even bother to write for the blogosphere any more. What’s the point? It’s all just scripts and sharp-elbowed attacks these days. Relatively few bloggers care about anything but somehow “winning” in their hate-war against those who disagree, and the very few who try to sustain some kind of real discourse get shouted down or, more commonly, just plain shunned by the systematic refusal of links.

In 2009, just four short days ago, I probably would have been right there with Jason in shaking my head about all of the above stories and the range of reactions to them, but a ten day blogging sabbatical complete with time to reflect on just what the hell I do on a day-to-day basis at this very site has yielded a slightly different response. I think we need to stop running through the agonized shirt tearing about the ridiculousness of the political blogosphere every time the antics of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Al Franken, or Keith Olbermann take centre stage and reconcile ourselves to a hard truth: this is our politics. [Read more →]

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 →]

John Cole's pets, Tunch and Lily

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 →]

He is perhaps best known for playing a key role in the resignation of CBS’s Dan Rather following the forged Killian document scandal.  He also played a role in bringing attention to altered photographs in the Adnan Hajj photographs controversy. In July 2008, LGF identified that photographs of Iran’s nuclear missile test had been altered.

More recently, Johnson has locked spears with many on the right over issues such as Obama’s birth certificate, creationism in schools, and “Obama Derangement Syndrome.”

He helped found the popular new media site, Pajamas Media, though he has since fallen out with the publishers and, as of September, has removed all links from Little Green Footballs to Pajamas Media.

I had a chance to exchange emails with Charles Johnson about his experience as a blogger and the current state of affairs on the war on terror and the conservative blogosphere. [Read more →]

And I didn’t win.  As Kevin Drum notes,

By the way, the ten winners include a Nobel Prize winner, a Bush 43 assistant secretary of commerce (guess which one), a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, a former researcher at the Kennedy School of Government, an Atlantic Media fellow, and a small-town newspaper editor.  Not exactly a crowd of just plain folks.  It might have been more fun to read the other 4,790 entries.

I guess the odds were against me.  I was under the impression this would be a battle between relative amateurs and unknowns, not Nobel Prize winners and Atlantic Media fellows.  I stand corrected.

Here are the winners.

In any case, here’s what I submitted, in case you’re interested: [Read more →]