Smart piece in Salon on the culture of blogging. Actually, just sane and insightful. Here’s Scott Rosenberg on how bloggers keep the rest of the media (and, I might add, other bloggers) on their toes:
[T]o lazy reporters, the world of blogs represents their worst nightmare: It’s an endless parade of experts in every conceivable subject they might write about, all equipped with Internet-style megaphones ready to pounce on errors. Careful and thoughtful journalists will nevertheless welcome the advent of blogging: At worst, it should keep them on their toes and give them an incentive not to slip up, and at best, it should give them a chance to do their job better.
The one element that Rosenberg misses, however, is blowback. If, like me, you both write for the mainstream media and also snarl at it on a regular basis, some editors can take revenge and cut you off. Most of the time, people in big media, being journalists, don’t mind criticism, especially from a piddling one-man blog. But others take offense, and you get canned. In my case, I have been barred indefinitely from writing any more for the New York Times Magazine. Although I have long had a fantastic relationship with the editors there, and have written some of my best journalism for them, their boss, Howell Raines, has sent down a ruling. My presence in the Times, I’m told, makes him “uncomfortable,” and I am off limits for the indefinite future. A great sadness to me, but completely his editorial prerogative and, given the sharpness of some of my broadsides, understandable. I’m lucky I have other outlets – and this blog of course! – but it does tend to show that the notion that new media and old media are effortlessly complementary is not completely true. When you bite the hand that feeds you, sometimes you’ll get a good slapping. But don’t worry. I’ll keep biting.
FUNERAL FOR THE “FASCIST”: If you saw the photograph in today’s New York Times of thousands of young and old people holding up pictures of Pim Fortuyn, you will understand better why the media’s depiction of him as a wacko fascist is a grotesque distortion. The New York Times won’t give us an article, but the Washington Post does, and the newest revelations are interesting:
Meanwhile in Amsterdam, prosecutors indicated Fortuyn’s suspected killer may have been plotting against three other members of his anti-immigration party. Police have charged a 32-year-old Dutchman with the killing. Though his name has not been officially released, he has been identified by former colleagues as Volkert van der Graaf, an environmental and animal rights activist. The names of the party members and maps of their neighborhoods were found in the suspect’s car, said a spokeswoman for the pubic prosecutor.
By the way, Fortuyn’s party is not “anti-immigration.” It fully supports the right of every current immigrant in Holland to stay and be assimilated. All it wants is an end to further immigration in a country the size of Maryland with a population of 16 million. But what this news suggests is that this murder was part of a premeditated campaign of political assassination from far-left, enviro-maniacs. That’s news. Vote LPF.
The Dish 