Yet another blogging story
Ok, first, orthodox AP stylebook followers, please stop calling the web "the Web." That proper-noun treatment is soo 1997. Call blogs web logs if you must, but "Web logs" just looks ugly and stupid. /rant
This Hatchet article presents a rather informed description of why blogs matter, I must say. Probably helps that a political scientist provided the commentary, rather than a journalist. I think this professor Farrell hits on the most interesting thing about news blogs right now - they can bring an important story from relative obscurity to the forefront of the political agenda, either by incubating ideas from an underreported event, or pooling original research. The first sort of action worked well to keep pressure on Trent Lott and led to his removal from senate leadership. The second and less common activity is what was seen in the Dan Rather episode.
Are these powers such that blogs should be subject to FEC regulation, as the article suggests? I don't think so. As Farrell says, "Individual blogs are not very interesting in themselves. What is important is how they link to each other to create a massive network." He's right - it's tiny things done by thousands of bloggers that make a difference, so each blogger being subject to stiff regulations wouldn't make sense, and would just break a valuable system (sure, Atrios may get 145,000 visitors every day, but how many viewers has Fox or CNN?). I'm getting a little tired of hearing protected journalists who do very little in the interest of the country bitch about bloggers not deserving full first amendment protection. For the most part, I think bloggers, left, right and elsewhere, are genuinely passionate people who write because they care what's going on in the world, and want it to be better. This, I think, is the exact group of people whose expression our framers meant to defend with the first amendment.
This Hatchet article presents a rather informed description of why blogs matter, I must say. Probably helps that a political scientist provided the commentary, rather than a journalist. I think this professor Farrell hits on the most interesting thing about news blogs right now - they can bring an important story from relative obscurity to the forefront of the political agenda, either by incubating ideas from an underreported event, or pooling original research. The first sort of action worked well to keep pressure on Trent Lott and led to his removal from senate leadership. The second and less common activity is what was seen in the Dan Rather episode.
Are these powers such that blogs should be subject to FEC regulation, as the article suggests? I don't think so. As Farrell says, "Individual blogs are not very interesting in themselves. What is important is how they link to each other to create a massive network." He's right - it's tiny things done by thousands of bloggers that make a difference, so each blogger being subject to stiff regulations wouldn't make sense, and would just break a valuable system (sure, Atrios may get 145,000 visitors every day, but how many viewers has Fox or CNN?). I'm getting a little tired of hearing protected journalists who do very little in the interest of the country bitch about bloggers not deserving full first amendment protection. For the most part, I think bloggers, left, right and elsewhere, are genuinely passionate people who write because they care what's going on in the world, and want it to be better. This, I think, is the exact group of people whose expression our framers meant to defend with the first amendment.
posted by onlooker at 12:08 PM
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