Within a year, the "commercial" journalists will have their own blogs, and a few sanctioned bloggers will attain mainstream status.

From my blog:

I haven't seen a lot of blogs covering this story. Kairosnews has a post about it, and Instapundit had a brief entry on it, but otherwise, silence (I should add that my blogroll isn't very extensive. Maybe everyone's harping all over this thing and in my ignorance I just missed it).

Seems like there should be more reaction from the blogosphere on this one. Brokaw says bloggers are a "political jihad." Cronkite calls them "scandalmongers." Where's the outrage, people? Matt Barton at Kairosnews did manage to work up a pretty good froth over this one, and the cnet story links to a response from Boycott CBS, but otherwise, not so much.

Personally I don't think bloggers are scandalmongers so much as they are blathering idiots. They report with authority on things they don't understand. This is not to say the mainstream media doesn't on occasion do the same thing, but the mainstream media can, on occasion, be convinced it made a mistake. There's no convincing these online zealots. (If you're reading this, and you have a blog, I don't mean you. I mean those other bloggers.)

That's not to say there aren't bloggers who are outright scandalmongers. There's nothing like the rush of a blog post that becomes a hit -- linked by the "famous" blogs or Fark or Slashdot. The act of creating a blog is in itself an act of vanity, so the temptation to write something really juicy is incredibly great. After all, if you don't want to earn some sort of "fame" from your writing, you could just keep a private journal, right? (Yes, of course I'm including myself in this characterization. However, when I write something especially juicy, I do at least have the decency to label it "satire.")

Mostly, I think, most bloggers are just plain stupid. (Of course, if you're reading this and you have a blog, you're obviously an exception.) Let me give a germane example: in response to the claim that bloggers are mounting a "political jihad" against Dan Rather, blogger and BoycottCBS founder Michael Paranzino retorted as follows:

Jihad is not Americans demanding reforms from an arrogant and biased media. Jihad is Islamists mowing down children for sport, blowing up families at Tel Aviv cafes, and in case he forgot, terrorists sending jet airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Paranzino is clearly so dull-witted that he can't see that Brokaw was making an metaphor. No thinking reader would interpret Brokaw's words as suggesting that bloggers are mounting a religious jihad against Rather. Brokaw qualified his statement with the word "political," indicating that he understood this not to be the same as a true jihad. How can the founder of BoycottCBS.com claim as a goal anything other than to strip Rather of his political power? Wasn't that exactly Brokaw's point?

This is just one example of the way bloggers quickly lose perspective on the issues and reveal their ignorance. Since anyone can have a blog, those messages percolate quickly through the blogosphere and begin to take on a life of their own.

But you better not take my word for it. Remember, I just told you I don't read many blogs. On this topic, I'm as ignorant as any blogger out there.

--Dave

I already noticed this trend here in Tampa. During the hurricanes, several reporters for the St. Pete Times had their "official St. Pete Times Blogs" hosted off the newspaper's mainpage. Of course, most people went to these "blogs" and said, "Ohh, okay, so that's a blog! I thought it was a bunch of kids in all black writing about sticking pins in themselves." I think the St Pete Times idea of "blogs" were "rough articles" with sprinkles of stream-of-consciousness tossed in to make them seem more "happening." I searched around the site, but apparently they've taken down the Hurricane Charley Blogs, which were really quite fascinating.

I don't so much mind that a journalist working for the St. Pete Times would be obligated to start a blog (apparently during special events like the occasional gust); what I wonder, though, is whether these blogs will allow commentary and how the newsource will respond to this interaction. The St Pete Times site offers a pretty bustling forum. I really admire this effort; the competition, the ultra-conservative Tampa Tribune, does not offer this type of community.

I'm a little puzzled here as to why it's not possible to recognize a metaphor and, at the same time, object to its inappropriateness. How exactly is that dull-witted?

cgb

My point is that the metaphor is entirely appropriate. This guy wants to take down CBS news. If that isn't a "political jihad," I don't know what is. Furthermore, there is no indication from his analysis that he understands this is a metaphor.

I can see what you're saying: sometimes metaphors like "holocaust" get bandied about too loosely, but in this case a political jihad is exactly what you've got: a bunch of zealots hoarding around a designated victim. If he really understood Brokaw's metaphor, he could have explained why it was inappropriate.

Also, part of the point of the "over the topness" of my post is to show by example how bloggers sensationalize and stretch the truth.

--Dave

Quite clever, Dave. However, these days I'd lump the term "jihad" in there with "holocaust," and "orientate" as words that just aren't suitable. There is obviously a lot of tension between bloggers and journalists which is growing daily. If things aren't stopped, I fear for the future of the universe itself.

Hey, is anyone else watching NBC right now? Tom Brokaw just said they're going to do a segment on "online bloggers." :)



CultureCat

Hmm...Just finished watching the VP debate. Normally, I would switch off the tube the moment the cultural industry kicked in with its torrent of ads, but something NBC anchor Brokaw said kept it on--"Then we'll check in with ONLINE BLOGGERS to see what they have to say about the debate tonight." Eh?

Okay, I'll keep watching. Err....

Guess Brokaw wouldn't count "online bloggers" as part of the "truth squad" (a term that gets on my nerves more the more they use it). :P



CultureCat

Okay...Not much to see here, really. Brokaw interviewed two bloggers, Ana Cox from Wonkette.com and John H. Hinderaker from Power Line Blog.com. Both bloggers got about 2 minutes to give a quick spiel; neither one seemed impressed with what I thought was a stellar performance from John Edwards.

It's really funny that Brokaw felt it was necessary to define "blog" for the TV community: "It's an abbrevation of WEB LOG" (with helpful on-screen animation of the two words coming together, then WE fading out...Very helpful.) Neither blogger gave a very good performance, naturally; but, then again, maybe that was Brokaw's point (look how good I look/sound on a camera, here's these bloggers." Everytime he said "blogger" he seemed to wince the way Patton would wince saying "peace activist."

I'm sorry. Assuming the accuracy and extant vitality of the culture industry, would you explain how a shift from commercial anchors (like Rather and Brokaw) to bloggers (who are increasingly commercialized as associates/affiliates) possibly spells the end of the culture industry? Or are you hinting that the shift in the former is symptomatic of the dissolution of the latter?

What I had in mind was really something more akin to Jurgen Habermas than ol' Horky and Adorno, though I think the same sentiment applies: Big commercial journalism is incompatible with true political discourse. Habermas saw the peak of enlightenment during the heyday of early print journalism, when ever small town had two local newspapers (independently owned) and scads of journals were churning out of every printing press. The internet is an even better incarnation of this principle; even more people are able to say, create a political blog and actually garner an appreciable audience than some like-minded individual in 1750 could have hoped to do by owning or leasing a printing press.

Many, many "small voices" will eventually undermine the "big corporate voice" of the culture industry.

Journalists co-opt bloggers, phase 1:
Robert Novak's blog on tonight's debate (if you define blog as a narrow column of one sentence reactions flanked by three columns of advertisements). Paul Begala's blog manages 4-6 sentences per entry.

Both journalists' comments are in the left center column, a clear indication of liberal bias by CNN.