Well, after two weeks in which conservative bloggers and conservative posters on conservative fora like FreeRepublic disprove a major media fraud and nearly bring down a sitting anchorman (and when I say "nearly," I just mean we're not done yet), the New York Times decides to write a big Sunday Magazine article about bloggers.
About FreeRepublic, that started the ball rolling?
About PowerLine, that greatly advanced the story in those first hours?
About LGF, who proved the documents to be forgeries within hours of seeing them by just posting an MS Word copy of the text on his site?
Oh, no.
You might think that those might be the bloggers the NYTimes would talk to-- you know, the ones actually making news.
But you'd be wrong.
In the first clear victory for the blogosphere over the legacy media, the New York Times decides to spend ten pages talking about...
Daily Kos, Josh Marshall, and Wonkette.
Gee, PowerLine LGF refuted a 60 Minutes story and put the entire CBS News organization in a state of crisis, and Wonkette tells dick-jokes (bad ones, actually). Who's more newsworthy?
Why, fucking Wonkette, of course.
It's unbelievable. Instapundit gets a brief mention, Kaus gets a paragraph, FreeRepublic gets one passing reference, and then back to Kos, Marshall, Wonkette.
Left-wing politics are thriving on blogs the way Rush Limbaugh has dominated talk radio, and in the last six months, the angrier, nastier partisan blogs have been growing the fastest.
Hey, dickhead-- have you seen my sitemeter lately? How about Allah's? How about PowerLine's? How about LGF's? How about Bill from INDC's?
The reporter likes to rattle off the names of leftist blogs that aren't very high on the traffic or link lists:
Moulitsas was in Section 320, and so was Armstrong from MyDD, Atrios of Eschaton, Zoe from Gadflyer, Jesse and Ezra, Jeralyn of Talkleft, Dave Pell from Electablog, Chris Rabb from Afro-Netizen, Bill Scher from Liberal Oasis and Christian Crumlish of radiofreeblogistan.
...but apparently feels that mentioning Instapundit and FreeRepublic constitutes sufficient exposure of the right side of the blogosphere... you know, the side that's actually making all the fucking news lately.
But there is no liberal media bias.
None. At. All.
It's just their damn phones. Their phones are biased. They just don't have any right-leaning numbers on them, like the archconservative "6" or vaguely fascist "8."
Tomorrow's Headlines, Today:
WASHINGTON POST: Under Cloud, Dan Rather Resigns; "New Media" Claims Triumph
NEW YORK TIMES: The Irrepressible Wonkette Makes Hilarious "Don't Go There" Reference While Discussing Paris Hilton's Pooter
Frankly, I thought the Times couldn't get much lower but after they attacked Allawi the other day and said that he had no right to speak for the Iraqi people (on the grounds that he hadn't been elected by the people, this from a paper that has praised "popularly elected" leaders such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Castro, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide)! I wonder just what they are willing to justify to get to get the left into power. And to think, they aren't even the most left-wing major paper around! Over on the other coast you got the L.A. Times!
According to MSM, if you are not left-wing you do not exist.
November 3rd has the potential to be one extremely fucking funny day. I'm going to get a case of beer and cover my monitor and keyboard with Saran wrap to protect them from spit-takes. The DU threads alone might require me to order an oxygen mask.
Note: am I the only one getting the term h_t_t_p rejected due to questionable content?
Oh, this is rich.
[Cox] dropped out of a Ph.D. program in history at the University of California at Berkeley and found happiness for a few years at Suck.com, a snarky social-commentary Web site from the first Internet heyday. She tried freelancing after that, and then spent five frustrating years being fired from or leaving one job after another, such well-meaning, highbrow institutions as Mother Jones, The American Prospect and The Chronicle of Higher Education -- plus another place she won't name, where, she says, they chastised her for raising her eyebrows wrong and for sighing too loud in meetings. Finally, last fall, she gave up on journalism. She was filling out applications for a master's in social work when Nick Denton called.
A shiftless, unemployable dropout. Nice.
NY Times doing it's damndest to stay in the crosshairs of the blogosphere. I dont like AS much, but he really opened my eyes to the NY Times and BBC 18 months ago.
Joe-
Those DU threads are so fucking sweet. I never laughed so hard in my life. Did you see the one where they were trying to decide what country to flee to when they saw the Newsweek and Time polls? Priceless.
WTF is with the h-t-t-p warning?
I don't have the resources, but how can you get this story (complete with reporters connections) to Drudge or Rush Limbaugh.
Maybe the NYT was trying to "balance" the appearances of Scott Johnson and Mickey Kaus on NBC Nightly News this past week.
My comments were being rejected because of the "http" in my blog plug, but it seems to be working now.
The Commissar's routine about "this blogger does not exist" or "you did not read this, comrade" - the Times is actually doing that for real. Amazing.
LGF apparently got interviewed and ignored.
Lets give em what for!
To rein in the media, eventually we will have to talk to the real bossed -- the advertisers.
Advertisers are the people who ultimately bankroll the NYT and the rest. If they start complaining because they get a bad name from the rubbish printed by the journalists, the MSM will start to listen.
Im surpised you still read the NYT I have some used pieces of toilet paper that are better reading. Well I don't have them anymore.
Good post. James
Lame!!! I don't know what they were thinking.
Except... dude, I would SO DO Wonkette!!!
Who gives a rat's ass what the Times says? They're the reason for our success. It's pretty funny they work up that kind of disdain when their ass is bleeding.
One hopes the other power centers of American socialism will join the NYT in trying to fight conservative blogs by misdirecting public attention to Leftist blogs. Nothing will do more to ensure that the Left misses the revolution. They’ll be off in their little world hyping each other while the Right moves ever closer to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
Conservative blogs deserve to celebrate, but over the longer term it’s tempting to want to underplay their success so the Left will keep thinking it has the media monopoly it needs to package and sell Kerry-type candidates.
Well, I for one can't blame the NYT for focusing on the lefty bloggers. I mean, Kos alone was insturmental in debunking all that "forgery" nonsense.
God bless you, Markos! Where would we be without your document-authentication and typewriter history expertise?
Sorry ACE! But Matthew Kalm interviewed Charles Johnson at LGF for the better part of an hour, talked about how Johnson proved the CBS documents were fake within hours of the 60 Minutes II, talked about Johnson's background as a bedwetting liberal Democrat pre 9/11, then failed to run a word about his Site, LGF.
Johnson is fit to be tied. It could be Kalm decided to avoid LGF because of the "racist taint" charge the Left regularly lobs at LGF (based on toleration of anti-Muslim hate speech) and LGF's expousal of Right Wing Zionist objectives, but I doubt it....
Because Kalm ignored all conservative and mainstream political sites, and went with the Left for his 10 page article, somehow thinking Wonkette was more important politically than Powerline, Allahpundit, Drudge, Instapundit, DenBeste, etc.
He definitely gave the folks who have fact-checked the MSM on several occasions his silk hanky slap in the face. Kos, Wonkette, and Josh Marshall. Yep, there's the Blogosphere! Surprised he left out the sharpest political analyst out there - Oliver Willis.
But Kalm is going to be on C-Span tomorrow and they have a call in timeblock. Hope someone savvy, polite and not black helicopter-raving bonkers can adroitly express dismay and at the same time filet the guy as well as a Chris Hitchens could.
...at the same time filet the guy as well as a Chris Hitchens could.
Shhhhh! Pipe down with the "filet" talk already--you don't want to attract a hungry Olliver Willis, do you?
Trying get us all mauled or something?
The libs are scared of knowledge - they might learn the truth, you see. So the NY Times gives them the feel-good story they want to hear. "No conservatives at the gates, liberalism is winning, they'll never bomb diss place" etc.
But knowledge is power, and with a deliberately corrupted data stream the libs are doomed.
Well, even more doomed.
As Mark Steyn said after the '02 midterms: "Remind me never to complain about 'liberal media bias' again."
Well, at this rate, Old Media's influence will continue to erode, until someday some writer at the NYT will opine that they never get any exposure in the Blogosquare (or whatever they call it), and it's just not fair that they're being ignored!
Hey Trentt Lott residing from Republican Leadership had nothing to do with Josh Marshall and the blogosphre, oh no! And you iditios whine, "We ALMOST brought down a CBS news anchror." What a bunching of pathetic fools.
Yeah, you iditios!
Eric,
Did, um, Josh Marshall actually break the Trent Lott story?
No?
This is the first story in which bloggers actually scooped genuine news from the LLM (liberal legacy media; just tryin' to be different). All Marshall did in the Lott story was link and bitch, which is, to be fair, something I do a lot, but it can't be called breaking a story.
In other words,
Then shut the fuck up, moron.
Who cares who broke what. This is still bitching, pure and simple. Even Reynolds would argree
HAHA! You guys [right-wing blogoshpere] got PWNED!!!
I have become a new blogger because of the contorversy. I have had a lot of ideas in my head but now I have a medium to put them out there. This controversy had got me going!!!
Fritz's Thoughts
I think you guys are too subtle for Ecir.
Treacher's right. You guys are a bunch of iditos. And assholes, too. Especially the ass of spades.
This was a New York Times Magazine feature story. It wasn't a news story. The majority of reactions here are based on the premise that this is a story that Times decided to do in response to the blogosphere's good work on Rathergate. That premise is demonstrably false. They were working on it for weeks, and began working on it prior to the Democratic Convention. In fact, though I read the story yesterday morning and don't remember perfectly, it seems to me that the story was completed before Rathergate ever took place. Isn't that a more likely explanation for why it doesn't mention Rathergate?
In the words of Eric Alterman
"What liberal media??"
Yeah, right-wing blogs have been completely ignored by the media. What paranoid planet do you nutburgers come from, anyway? If the Times (or any paper) does a profile of a Republican senator, does this make them biased for not mentioning all the Democrats in the Senate?
washerdreyer, you're right of course, but (and I'm basing this solely on my first and likely last visit) it doesn't appear you're dealing with the cream of the intellectual crop here.
I'm adequate. Are you guys? Reading all this, I can't be sure. Signs kinda point to no.
Klam was actually working on the article since last spring. I spoke with him in Boston and he namechecked me in the article but didn't quote me. Boo hoo. Maybe Charles Johnson and I can have a pity party together.
Were you at both national conventions? No? Because Kos, Wonkette, and JMM were.
Don't worry, Kalm will be writing his piece about the bloggers and the CBS memos. Not because he's trying to be evenhanded, but because the racist, genocidal LGF is such a great posterchild for the right-wing blogostan.
The article was about bloggers at the convention. Grow up. Seriously.
Awwww, boo hoo hoo, poor ickle bloggers didn't get their names in the paper! Go running home and cry to mommy you sissies!
November 3rd has the potential to be one extremely fucking funny day. I'm going to get a case of beer and cover my monitor and keyboard with Saran wrap to protect them from spit-takes. The DU threads alone might require me to order an oxygen mask.
Me too. I am thinking of a running bloglist of the funniest overwrought reactions from DU'ers and others.
At least you'll have some beer to cry into.
Who can argue with that?
1) Give Josh his due: he did a lot of original reporting on the Trent Lott story, and - while it wouldn't have had the impact it did without every blogger and his brother linking and denouncing Lott - he was the go-to page for days on the story.
2) Just as well the NYT stayed with its three bloggers. Considering the treatment those three got, I don't think anyone ought to want to have been part of this "profile". Yikes. I mean, what does the story tell us:
- Josh Marshall is a failed academic who's ambivalent about that (and he dresses badly)
- Wonkette is a failed journalist who's ambivalent about that (and the reporter really, really wants to get into her pants)
- Kos is a ranter who has an inflated sense of self-importance and hangs out in unpleasant dives
You bettah off.
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