Wednesday, October 01, 2003
What hath blogs wrought?
I am new to the world of blogging, though I have done quite okay for 4-5 months worth of blogging. Though I used to read more than one blog, Rajesh had to arm-twist me into writing one myself. After all, blogging was one of the reasons for the RISC team coming together. I fundamentally use blogs as a networking and personal knowledge management device. But blogs are a great deal more than just that.
The Democratic candidates have clearly realised the importance of blogs and most of them have started maintaining blogs (eg: Clark, Dean). But I suspect L'affaire Plame might prove to be the tipping point in the growth and importance of blogs, especially political ones. For a lot of folks, the central question is on the nature of the jounalist-source relationship. For me however, the real story is how the mainstream media sat on the scandal of the year for over two months without doing a damn thing, while bloggers kept it alive. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune says as much.
This scandal should have unfolded in July, but the mainstream media weren't interested. The story was kept alive because of dogged work by a few online bloggers, most especially Josh Marshall of "TalkingPointsMemo" (you can find him in the blogs section of www.startribune.com/2cents ). The bloggers will never get the attention and the high praise they deserve for keeping attention focused on this. So let it be noted here at least.
There are several other examples. On Sept 25th, Josh Marshall broke the Joseph Allbaugh story. The New York Times took 4 days to catch up. Eric Poole dug up the bit about Joe Wilson contributing to the Bush election campaign even as most media were reporting that he gave money to John Kerry. Atrios and Calpundit have proved to be more on the ball than CNN or Fox. And of course, while I'm at it, I should also mention the Drudge Report which sort-of started this new wave of independent online news publishing.
I could go on and on, but I'll stop with a couple of thoughts -- is this a sustainable new trend? Will it act act as a counterweight to traditional media, which in my opinion, has completely abandoned its role as the fourth estate in the U.S.? Will it acquire more of an agenda-setting role, one played traditionally by the NYT and the Post?
The Democratic candidates have clearly realised the importance of blogs and most of them have started maintaining blogs (eg: Clark, Dean). But I suspect L'affaire Plame might prove to be the tipping point in the growth and importance of blogs, especially political ones. For a lot of folks, the central question is on the nature of the jounalist-source relationship. For me however, the real story is how the mainstream media sat on the scandal of the year for over two months without doing a damn thing, while bloggers kept it alive. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune says as much.
This scandal should have unfolded in July, but the mainstream media weren't interested. The story was kept alive because of dogged work by a few online bloggers, most especially Josh Marshall of "TalkingPointsMemo" (you can find him in the blogs section of www.startribune.com/2cents ). The bloggers will never get the attention and the high praise they deserve for keeping attention focused on this. So let it be noted here at least.
There are several other examples. On Sept 25th, Josh Marshall broke the Joseph Allbaugh story. The New York Times took 4 days to catch up. Eric Poole dug up the bit about Joe Wilson contributing to the Bush election campaign even as most media were reporting that he gave money to John Kerry. Atrios and Calpundit have proved to be more on the ball than CNN or Fox. And of course, while I'm at it, I should also mention the Drudge Report which sort-of started this new wave of independent online news publishing.
I could go on and on, but I'll stop with a couple of thoughts -- is this a sustainable new trend? Will it act act as a counterweight to traditional media, which in my opinion, has completely abandoned its role as the fourth estate in the U.S.? Will it acquire more of an agenda-setting role, one played traditionally by the NYT and the Post?
