Time Writer Joe Klein Takes Time to Understand Blogosphere
Still semi-fuming about Andrew Keen’s new book, I began reading a piece, by Time writer Joe Klein, called “Beware the Blogger’s Bile,” skeptically to say the least.
Refreshingly, it’s an intelligent and balanced piece (to counter Keen’s description of his own book as “not designed to be particularly fair or balanced”!) that looks at what’s going on in liberal political blogs, and how they are reacting to the Bush administration and the conservative media structure that helped bring him to power.
Klein and several other journalists – including Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette fame – blog at a site called Swampland.
I can’t help thinking that Joe gets it because he’s in the swamp with the rest of us.
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June 9th, 2007 at 11:10 am
After seeing Keen try and defend his polemic during a panel at PDF, I won’t be reading that. To borrow from Gertrude Stein, “There is no there there.” But we should be wary of the phobia that people have developed against “elite” media and their misplaced faith that “public” media (which is progressively being commodified by commercial interests) is the panacea.
Replacing the dangers of an “elite” with the terrors of tribal online mobs is not much of a solution.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Sprague, totally agreed and well said. The growth of the blogosphere comes from the belief that the elite is not the panacea, but all the same this new environment isn’t itself a cure-all. The beautiful thing lies in more choice and all the mess and complexity and layers it brings.
And we get to try to make sense of it all — lucky us !
June 13th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Eric,
There’s a debate of sorts going on at my site about the (deleterious) effects of new media on journalistic standards. Right up your alley, I would think. Why don’t you weigh in?
SD
June 14th, 2007 at 10:43 am
I will check it out Sprague, thanks!
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