BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Monday, September 29, 2003
A critique of pure blogging.
I have not been following the Daniel Weintraub saga all that
closely, so I appreciated today's
New York Times piece
on the matter.
Weintraub writes a weblog for the
Sacramento
Bee. A couple of weeks
ago, the Bee announced that Weintraub would be required to
submit new posts to his editors before uploading them to his blog,
"California
Insider." The policy change
may or may not be related to the fact that he'd written a post a few
overly touchy supporters of Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante may
have found racially insensitive. (Oddly enough, the Times article, by Michael Falcone, makes no mention of this angle.)
With the boilerplate out of the
way, my question is this: What's the big deal? Some bloggers,
particularly Slate's
Mickey Kaus, are outraged,
but Weintraub himself seems okay with it. Moreover, it strikes me
that to the extent there's any controversy, it has to do with the
overwrought sense of importance that some bloggers have about
themselves and what they're doing.
As best as I can define it, the
only pure blog is one that is written independently of any
media organization. Folks like Josh
Marshall, Bob
Somerby, Andrew
Sullivan, and
Glenn
Reynolds are out there on
their own, and God bless them for it.
Those of us who are blogging for
our employers are engaged in something different -- essentially,
writing something that looks like a blog, reads like a blog, and in
many respects is a blog, but that may be more akin to an
online column, subject to certain constraints. That's true of Media
Log, as well as such fine blogs as Altercation
(MSNBC.com), Joe
Conason's Journal
(Salon), and, yes, Kausfiles, whose author gave up his
independence in return for Microsoft's filthy lucre. (Hey, Mickey:
Good for you!)
Neither fish nor fowl:
Danny
Schechter, who writes his
indispensable "Dissector's Web Log" for Mediachannel.org,
but who is also the boss.
Now, what the Bee's critics
seem not to want to acknowledge is that if you're blogging for
someone else, you're getting edited somewhere down the line. Here's
how it works at Media Log Central: I upload my posts myself, without
the intervention of any editor. But my editors and I talk about what
works, what doesn't work, and what I might do differently the next
time. And were I to write something that never should have seen the
light of day, guess what? It will come down.
That's the way it should be. The
extra value that a news organization can offer is, after all, editing
-- the collective judgment of experienced people, and not just the
sensibility of one person.
Blogging for a news organization
doesn't have to be a contradiction in terms. Unless you think the
words freewheeling and responsible don't belong in the
same sentence.
Hannity & Colmes,
explained. The most accurate description I have ever read of the
Fox News Channel's dreadful Hannity & Colmes program
appears in the current New York Press (scroll way, way down,
to "Best
Rigged Talk Show").
Here's the clincher:
The dynamic and
charismatic ultra-conservative [Sean] Hannity squares off
nightly against the weak, conciliatory and center-left
[Alan] Colmes, who is just about the least effective
spokesman for the liberal cause imaginable. If that weren't
enough, rightie-tightass fuckhead Dennis Miller was recently added
to the show as a weekly commentator.
Be warned: fuckhead is mild
compared to some of the other language used to describe this
miserable show.
John Carroll, blogger. His
"Campaign
Journal" is
back.
posted at 1:30 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
