After making buffoons of themselves over the National Guard forgeries, CBS is apparently now promulgating yet more phony documents, according to Ratherbiased , this time to promote an already discredited draft hoax. You remember – it’s the one that says the Bush Administration is secretly preparing to bring back the draft (secretly even to them, because this administration, like it or not, has staked its entire reputation on the volunteer army). A week ago I blogged about this fraud, but very briefly, thinking only a fool would believe the email posted here and that serious news outlets would never pick up this kind of nonsense. Wrong again. Never underestimate the partisan illiteracy of CBS… or the ability of their allies to regurgitate their lies.
Now let’s get down to something even more serious. I used to think the job of the blogs was to criticize these media folks, be their online editors. But it seems they really don’t care about the truth. I know that seems an extreme statement, but think about. Everything seems to be about protecting their position. And CBS isn’t the only one. The nearly uniform disrespect for blogs and the trashing of the reputation of bloggers throughout the mainstream media over the last week is not coincidental. Many are threatened. We are making a revolution here, but as with many revolutionaries we are caught up in the swim of events, unsure what to do. Everything is happening very fast. You, our readers, are our anchors – help us, correct us and support us.
MEANWHILE: Barbra wonders “Where is Our Free Press?” [She could buy one herself, if she's so worried bout it.-ed. Or two or three.]
I think the conversation went something like this:
Dan Rather: If we don’t jump all over this bogus story, everyone will think our other bogus story was bogus…
Producer: Dan, I think ÔøΩ
Dan Rather: I just told you what you think. This is Dan Rather.
Man, Kerry’s internal polling (two l’s; I was careful!) miust be awful if they’re down to this.
Followed the link and am amazed at the amount of detail exposed to the connections to the groups behind the main person being interviewed.
And in such a short time.
First – CBS is dimwitted for not knowing how to following links and do a simpleGoggle and WHOIS lookup (or they think the blogging public is so stupid as not to be able to do that themselves).
Second – where else but on the Internet and through a blog would this kind of information be exposed and disseminated so fast.
I fear CBS will catch on and make it harder to follow their deceptions. But for now – caught again.
Roger: you are a good person, and so you project good-person values on to others. Don’t get carried away tho. Sometimes a rat is just a rat.
CBS News apparently has adopted a new corporate mission –
To become the premier purveyer
of Propaganda in America.
Lots easier than real journalism.
Propaganda doesn’t require judgement, wisdom or expertise. Just the the ownership of a broadcast medium and people willing to subsidize the effort.
Lots easier.
Amazing.
it’s been clear for ages that the national MSM has considered one of its jobs to be assuring that Americans have correct attitudes. That is true on every contentious issue (look at the media from any pro-life point of view, for example, and then check the blogs for the enormous demonstrations the MSM doesn’t report because it might injure our attitudes. This year its defeating Bush at all costs, and ending the Iraq operation. It doesn’t matter if its taxes (high progressivity is best), environmental restrictions (always, unquestionably the best policy), gun control (guns are only good for hunting, get rid of the rest), foreign affairs (unilateralism is bad), to Israel (“cycle of violence”). The list is very long, and the MSM is actively driving agenda in every one of these areas and more.
The MSM is not about truth. The “objective media” include a bunch of propagandists and people with political agendas.
In the age of bloggers, we have the advantages previously mentioned – mass, individuals with advanced specialized knowledge, internet access to raw informationn (bloggers from Iraq, for example), etc. We lack a huge audience, but it is growing, and I suspect it is a surprisingly influential group.
If the MSM wants to defeat us, they have to cut off our sources of information. Anything else will fail. They can make attacks as they have done recently, and they will have no lasting effect.
Blogging is to America like the FAX machine was to communist eastern Europe. For that matter, the MSM is only slightly better than the easter European propaganda organs, and has the same ideology.
you are right Roger that the MSM doesn’t care about the truth. Just scan the AP or Reuters headlines today, and presumably through the election — they have become the campaign itself, indistinguishable from the campaignb operatives who issue press releases and related materials every day. Until recent times, on campaigns where I was press spokesperson, we pushed stories, releases, etc to the press hoping for some coverage. Now they do the work in conjunction with the campaign. They are interested in their guy winning and their agenda followed. So what we need from you is help keep the dialogue going in the blogs so that everyone in the web of connections can keep working against this push back. Their only strategy is to outlast and discredit the bloggers.
Dan Rather has copies of memos dated January, 2005 where Bush signs the draft into law! He refuses to say how he managed to obtain documents from the future, other than to note “courage.”
Ted Kennedy has demanded a full investigation into the Republican deceit.
Roger –”Now let’s get down to something even more serious. I used to think the job of the blogs was to criticize these media folks, be their online editors. But it seems they really don’t care about the truth. I know that seems an extreme statement, but think about. Everything seems to be about protecting their position.”
I cannot agree that your statement is extreme. For years, it has seemed to me that the discriminating difference between left-wing liberals and genuine conservatives is that left-wing liberals fall into two groups — “liars” and “useful idiots.”
I have hoped that it might be possible, one day, for a serious group of thinkers (as seem to be present often here) to give a serious consideration to this theory.
RayC
Roger:
While it is true that one of the big jobs of the bloggers is to act as independent editors — fact checkers if you will — of the MSM, it is not all that necessary that the MSM even acknowledge your presence, much less recognize that you have something of the truth to give. It is nice if that happens. It would happen that way in a perfect world. And I venture to say that in the future it will happen just that way. But it isn’t strictly necessary.
In lieu of recognition by the MSM, just being the “Electronic Pamphleteer”, informing the public as best you can of what you can, is a suitable secondary mission should you get the cold shoulder. If you and the other bloggers who are doing likewise do that enough, the MSM will have to take notice. And they are, it is starting to show up on their bottom line.
Pertaining to the pressure of the MSM and the lack of interest in the truth by them — there are only 2 ways to respond to this. Capitulate, which is unthinkable, or keep the pressure up. They are playing hardball now, so play. Again, the results are starting to show on their bottom line. In the end, those ratings mean everything to them. Keep it true. Keep it accurate. Keep it up.
So, keep the chin up. You are doing good, even without the recognition.
Looks like CBS, or at least Dan Rather, has decided to go for the niche market of Dean, Moore, and Nader supporters. If CBS doesn’t like that idea, they are going to have to get rid of old Dan sooner and much more harshly rather than later and gently.
I was just on the Houston Chronicle site, and saw where the local talk radio station there, CBS affiliate KPRC, has just yanked his radio show, because they were unhappy with how the National Guard forgeries thing has been handled. They also mention other markets that he is being pulled from.
Keep it up — it is getting REAL results now.
Oh, and what a sickening feeling to know that I grew up in the same general area as he did. It just never dawned on me before…
BTW — I’d give y’all a direct link if I knew how, but here’s the URL of the page:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2819708
Truth trumps. As long as the MSM produces very biased or inaccurate or shoddy work, the blogosphere only needs to jump on it and spread the truth around – sooner or later other members of the MSM will need to grab the story and devote resources to it to retain their credibility.
The longer the MSM fails to heal itself, the better for the blogosphere. Every time the blogs hang a big “busted” sign on the MSM, they gain legitimacy. There may be enough residual legitimacy from memogate to get people to take this (somewhat more subtle) challenge seriously. I’m guessing there is. In any case, there will be someday.
Eventually the MSM will need to make a choice; continue to do bad work while following up on every story the blogs break (thereby killing those outlets that do lousy work and implicitly ceding fact-checking responsibility to the blogs), continue to do bad work while colluding to ignore the blogs (and watch those that do lousy work die a slow death), or reform themselves by sticking to well-researched, unbiased reporting (and thrive).
Gb, you must have a ‘hyperlink’ button somewhere…tho this site does it for you, as you see.
Roger, your plaintive query, ‘where should all this go, what should it do?’, that’s a real question; the very question CBS answered when it decided to start manufacturing its own proper citizenry.
Hence the question is easy to belittle–and hence courageous to ask–but could actually give rise to certain information projects that do need doing, somehow. One such that occurs often, is how to get the story out to the world that knows us only via the masscomm news & entertainment industry, that we have a great silent 80% that is as hard-working, humble, and serious as any people anywhere on the planet?
But, overall theme-wise, I’d say to concentrate on the journey, and leave the destination to fate. As the ancient Greek ‘character is fate’ idea would (did) predict, the first thing has been a reformation of the meaning of words. Without getting windy–always a temptation–you first line bloggers have been straightening out lies as fast as they blow down upon you from the shape-changing titans on high. If that’s all you ever do, “you could do woise!”
Roger, why not ask Barbra to start a balanced hard copy newspaper with you — including pages of opposing blog posts, so readers can get a “balanced” view, and try to check on facts, themselves.
Of course, her site is SO factually challenged, it’s nearly unreadable for me. Repeating, as truth, the lies the Left has told, which have been refuted, but the lies live on. In Barbra’s brain and elsewhere.
I don’t know, could be interesting to have FACT contests on various questions, like whether the CBS
“story included substantive and uncontested evidence that Bush didn’t show up for duty when he was supposed to,” [false]
Or, is it true that “If you tell the administration that several thousand more servicemen and women are needed in Iraq, like General Shinseki did, you get publicly scolded as being incorrect.” [true]
I think Bush is NOT perfect, and it’s important for Bush supporters to know this administration has been tough, possibly too tough, on any internal critics.
But imperfect execution of the right strategy means the execution can improve over time, and achieve victory. The wrong strategy, like Clinton’s / Carter’s / Kerry’s, can never win.
So start a newspaper already, Roger!
What happens if there is not draft? The Dems are playing a very dangerous game and it is beginning to look like a game.
Whether the latest fairy tale be a draft or a memo or whatever, sooner or later people will notice there is not a draft, there is not a pipeline, Halliburton is not stealing oil, etc and the sources of these fantasies will look kinda silly.
Rather looks worse than silly, he looks like a cad.
So I would say CBS is the perfect news outlet to break the draft dtory. People will just assume it is bs.
BTW, do these people think that Bush is Picard standing on the deck of the Starship Enterprise saying “Make it so”. Whatever he does requires some input from other branches of government. It is called checks and balances.
Just a thought…
Please send the Betsy’s Page link Roger gave us to any and all college students you have contact with. You might also remind them to get their absentee ballot (if they are away) and suggest they vote, if they are so inclined, against the political party who is really sponsoring (doomed to failure or otherwise) the bill to bring back the draft.
ìI was just on the Houston Chronicle site…î
What a coincidence. Only yesterday I commented on the economic fears of the MSM. A few hours later I found out that my own local (and very liberal) newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, is making significant ìcuts in staff.î These cutbacks ìwill be achieved through attrition, a voluntary buyout program and if necessary, involuntary layoffs.î Self preservation is still the primary motivation for the typical human being. Many liberal journalists are rightfully fearful that they will soon be seeking employment in another profession. The old days are gone forever.
It appears that some of the MSM are capitulating. Last night Victor Davis Hanson appeared on CNN’s Lou Dobbs show and stated that the United Nations is opposed to freedom and democracy (I thought everyone knew that).
CNN may just be waking up, or they may now realize that Kerry is toast, and they are trying to look like they are an impartial broadcaster.
I don’t think the broadcast was a mistake. Reading the transcript, it’s obvious CBS knows it’s not true. All the broadcast is doing is saying “there’s a rumor on the internet….” They have all the standard disavowals and then go in for the closeup of the Republican Mom who is worried about her sons if Bush gets re-elected. The intent was to create fear – it’s manipulative tabloid journalism. If you fuss about the story, their defense is “we said it was a rumor…, you just can’t trust what you read on the internet.” In the meantime, they’ve scared a lot of moms out there who are very worried about their children getting drafted.It’s time to boycott them. http://www.boycottcbs.com has organized a boycott to get Dan Rather off the air. By boycotting CBS News advertisers they’ve made a good start. A more effective boycott would be to blanket all CBS advertisers until Rather’s gone – especially the local advertisers. Not just CBS News but all CBS programming. Your local car dealer won’t put his money into a TV ad if he knows by doing so, he’s alienated half his potential customer base. The national advertisers are big enough, they may not care about the political costs. So next local ad you see on CBS, any time of day, give the advertiser a call and tell him he’s just thrown away his money because until Rather’s gone, you’d rather not patronize the advertiser. The affiliates will feel the heat a lot sooner than New York will. They in turn, will see Rather out the door.
What is the answer?
I believe that blogs (and FreeRepublic) re-scale the news. They take stories that show up in other places and re-focus them. They separate fact from opinion, highlight bias, point out where facts are omitted or misrepresented, and comment about whether the story is getting too much, or not enough, play.
The blogs and FreeRepublic generally do not do original news reporting.
If the mainstream media are not equipped to provide the raw material for the blogs, then where will it come from?
The stakes just keep increasing. Not only must we consider the implications of a Kerry administration whose vision of America is to knock it down a peg or two, but also a MSM that sometimes treats truth as an obstacle to getting out the story.
On the bright side the blogoshere has exceeded critical mass and is unstoppable as both an alternative media and a global town hall. All we have to do is keep doing.
OT but kind of time sensitive: Can anyone point me to a poll from a few months back that claimed over 70% of women support some restriction on abortion?
Has anyone wondered what a Democrat administration might attempt to do to rein in the bloggers, especially the opposition? If the blogosphere are to become a counterweight to the MSM, free speech needs to be ensured. Just because it is enshrined in the Constitution doesn’t mean someone may try to censor blogs.
(BTW, those having problems using Typekey, check your browser . . . seems Firefox 1.0PR has serious problems (I can replicate this every time) but using IE 6.0 – no problems at all)
ìBut it seems they really don’t care about the truth. I know that seems an extreme statement, but think about.î
Nothing new to me. Relativism and deconstructionism underpin todayís liberal cultural milieu. They feel totally justified in pushing the ridiculous rumor about the draft. After all, can you absolutely prove that it isnít true? If somebody comes up to you and says that we all will be eight feet tall and purple by 7 AM tomorrow–can you absolutely assert that this wonít occur? Why is your truth more valid than mine? Embracing the nihilistic premise of philosophical extreme skepticism inevitably results in pure madness.
We had Iraqi Information Minister “Baghdad Bob.” Now we have DNC/CBS Information Minister “D.C. Dan.”
Also, compare photos of the two. Separated at birth?
I had to reboot my computer to log on. Typekey does not seem to like me. My feelings are hurt.
Since this Typekey problem seems to be reproducible in Firefox, I’m filing a bug report with Mozilla.
ìThe blogs and FreeRepublic generally do not do original news reporting.
If the mainstream media are not equipped to provide the raw material for the blogs, then where will it come from?î
The MSM are not going to disappear. Did TV eliminate the radio? Did VHS tapes discourage people from going to the movies? No, the MSM will simply adapt to the new reality. And what is that? They now know that we will be fact checking their rear ends. The days of lazy liberal journalism are over. Those journalists who survive will have to become more responsible. They will actually have to earn what they get in life. Also, these media organizations will seek ideological balance. More conservative viewpoints will be added to the mix.
Egads . . . it seems to be working now
OT reply to Richard McEnroe,
You may want the Zogby poll released April 23, 2004, which found that only 13% of Americans support a position that abortion should be “legal for any reason at any time during the woman’s pregnancy” (quote from secondary source). So 87% of all Americans support some restriction (and note that this doesn’t get into other potential restriction, such as particular types of abortions).
Assuming equal representation of men and women, that would put the minimum percentage of women supporting some restriction at 74% (with 100% of men supporting some restriction). In fact, though, men and women are not nearly that far apart in their attitudes toward abortion, so the true percentage of women who support restriction on abortion is, at a guess, probably more than 80%.
http://www.lifenews.com/nat474.html
Lola:
You wrote: “Has anyone wondered what a Democrat administration might attempt to do to rein in the bloggers, especially the opposition?”
I expect that there will be an attempt to reign in bloggers through an amendment of the McCain-Feingold act. I wouldn’t be surprised if McCain himself pushed for it. The Democrats wouldn’t mind placing restrictions on political blogs even if it silenced there own Internet voice. The web is an uncontrollable entity that does not serve their purpose. They would love to see the MSM returned to its unregulated monopoly status.
However, I can’t see the Supreme Court ruling that restrictions on bloggers to be constitutional. How would you force a ban? What constitutes campaigning? Ads must be purchased but the owner pays for blogs. It’s personal speech. Of course, that’s what the Republicans thought would happen with McCain-Feingold. They guessed wrong on that one.
The MSM are much weaker than we suppose.
Yes, the Houston Chronicle is cutting staff, as is the Dallas Morning News, as did the San Francisco Chronicle not long ago, as did the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press before they were forced to combine their operating costs and merge in order to avoid bankruptcy.
We’ve seen fraudulent subscription figures at Newsday and other major newspapers– a sure sign that their business model is failing.
We’re seeing network affiliates drop CBS, and we have seen, for many years, all of the network news organizations desperately trying to interest someone, anyone, under the age of 65 in their news broadcasts. Tiny Fox routinely kicks their ass.
The MSM’s hysterical counterattacks are like the jihadists’ escalation in Fallujah: a death rattle, not the wave of the future. Their business model is toast.
Bring it on. Smash the MSM, and let a thousand blogs contend!
527s are part of the same phenom as the bloggers: amateurs organizing spontaneously and rapidly to break the monopoly power of centralized professional organizations.
The blogs and FreeRepublic generally do not do original news reporting.
What’s stopping us? You’re telling me that an intelligent aggregation engine combining the posts and links gathered from a thousand or ten or a hundred thousand blogs could not develop some good sources, and vet those sources? Isn’t that what happened with Rathergate, and what’s happening now with Rangel’s Draft bill?
You mean that we can’t create our own streaming video interviews, “talk shows”, newscasts? Why not?
Thibaud:
Once again you hit the wrong nail squarely on its head. 527s are not amateur operations. For the most part they are run by the same people who ran PAC political ads. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is the closest thing to amateurism we get but there were many similar PACs prior to McCain-Feingold.
ìWhat’s stopping us? You’re telling me that an intelligent aggregation engine combining the posts and links gathered from a thousand or ten or a hundred thousand blogs could not develop some good sources, and vet those sources?î
Thatís exactly what Iím saying. We are mostly part timers who must go out and earn a living. There will always be a need for full time journalists who can spend an incredible amount of time and energy pursuing a story.
Point taken. For “527s”, substitute Dean’s meetups and the Swifties. Dean raised, what, $40 million through these in a matter of a couple months?
My larger point is that the bloggers need to think of themselves like little ebays or Amazons, ie engines of aggregation and disintermediation.
The web enables talented amateurs to dispense with the MSM or the party fund-organizations and:
gain access to real expertise,
correct mistakes quickly through the wisdom of crowds/”markets”,
and coordinate the efforts of many hundreds of thousands of like minded individuals in pursuit of “truth” as they define it, whether that be supporting one political candidate or tearing down another one.
We are mostly part timers who must go out and earn a living. There will always be a need for full time journalists who can spend an incredible amount of time and energy pursuing a story.
Why can’t you use technology and market mechanisms to connect info sources and reporters? An online exchange, so to speak, that lets the market for news (AP, ABC, Reuters etc editors and reporters) bid on info offered by Charles Johnson or pajamablog.blogspot.com or whoever?
Example: Johnson’s info/expertise/”story” would have been “bid up” by this marketplace, and junk expertise from the lefty blogs would have been bid down. Look at how the NYSE embeds new information in the price of its listed securities. That’s a good way of collapsing an extraordinarily large amount of information into an actionable assessment of value.
To continue the financial analogy, the current news reporting rhythm is like a handful of insider brokers gathering under a buttonwood tree. Slow, dumb, easily manipulated, severely limited by time and space. The news business is ripe for Amazoning.
As to the blogs, this is a potential business model that actually works. A Charles Johnson or any other source can make at least as much money by providing such time-sensitive snippets of crucial information as he could via blog ad revenues.
ìWhy can’t you use technology and market mechanisms to connect info sources and reporters?î
We are already doing this–and will increasingly do so in the future. Many journalists will also become hyphenated professionals. They will only be part time news reporters and analysts. Still, news organizations will be necessary to vigorously follow up on particular stories. Claudia Rosett, for instance, would have almost certainly been unable to uncover the food for oil scam unless she was employed full time.
You push your argument a bit too far. It may even be 80% accurate. But the 20% false cannot be ignored.
Fair enough, but imagine how much more effective Claudia can be if she can go to a well in which every day, hundreds of OFF-related news snippets are tossed in by all and sundry. Right now, stories are said to “have legs”; with a web aggregation and exchange mechanism, they’ll take on turbo jet engines.
When that happens, thousands of bloggers will be able to quit their day jobs, and a million stringers will get real money for good info. Our newsworld will expand exponentially as stringers and bloggers from around the world offer info that until now has been available only if a western news bureau chose to maintain a presence in that region AND put someone on that partiucular beat.
News and info is an ever-perishing, ever-replenishing resource which often has exceptionally high scarcity value. It’s absurd that OTOH we rely on a handful of priests and priestesses to source and sift and filter and select the tiny snippets of the news universe they deem fit to who us, and OTOH we have to go scrounging with browsers and an extremely dumb algorithm called Google to find quality info.
Thibaud’s input is valid in that a story could be pursued independent of a specific blog. However, the successful blogs have an editorial function that separates the story from unedited comments.
I previously published a medical journal and found that the editorial board was an indispensable source of both content and editorial review (prior to publishing). If the editorial function can be delegated to an “editorial blog” (something like an editorial board), the result would be the most researched news source the world has ever seen.
I challenge Thibaud and others to see if a double blog could be established, one of which serves as a blog for unedited comments, and the other as a “final story” blog which would publish the results of the editorial blog review process. I would also suggest that the current blog managers (like Roger) be invited to participate as editorial review Managing Editors, while other Associate Editors be selected for their area of expertise.
Ray Elliott
Roger:
Somewhat off topic. I clicked on Babs’ link and checked to see if she allows people to E-mail comments to her. Guess what? She doesn’t. All I wanted to do was E-mail her some facts about flying fighters that she might want to consider when critiquing GWB’s service record. I guess she doesn’t like hearing from the peasantry. Well just in case Babs reads your blog [doubtful, her brain is to small to understand it] I want her to know that not only is Condi smarter then she is but she’s a better musician as well.
Additional thoughts on a double blog. If one allows unedited comments by subject matter, it could provide a menu of subjects to begin the process. Each item in the menu would have an Associate Editor to review comments and select those that were “advanced” to the “Final Story” blog. One could be the Yin and the other, Yang.
The final story, Yang, could be an ongoing story that is continuously updated. Revenues could be generated by selling stories to the printed media and replacing the outdated and predjudiced AP and Reuters newslines.
So there AP, now there may be a highly accurate and non slanted competitor!
Ray Elliott
Ray, am interested in talking further with you on this. You can email me if you wish on yahoo: tom_p_mclaughlin
thibaud -
Some off-the-cuff thoughts:
“Why can’t you use technology and market mechanisms to connect info sources and reporters?î
What if we take this one step further and actually offer to put up money for the further investigation of stories in which we are interested? That is, hire a professional reporter or team of reporters for a period of time (depending on interest as measured by the amount of hard cash pledged) to do the legwork on stories that we feel the media doesn’t cover, or doesn’t cover sufficiently?
This gives the blogosphere a way to get new information, as needed to complete a picture based on analysis of the bits and pieces available.
Surely there are freelance reporters who would be happy for the work. There could even be a mechanism for rating their work based on past results as judged by readers, and this information could be used to set a per diem pay scale.
Now you’re talkin’.
Use a bid/offer engine to connect those with valuable information–tips, leads, analysis, dirt!!!, comment/perspectives, expertise, wit, wisdom, etc– with those who can best make use of that information. Latter include not just editors and reporters but ANYONE looking for news/info/entertainment content. Let the market decide the value of the info on offer, and let an online exchange aggregate this content and then match sellers with buyers.
This could be applied to any kind of intellectual property: imagine if Roger could source screenplay ideas, and then offer his screenplay to the highest online bidder. Imagine if the medical reviews could source research from a million university researchers around the world. Or if, every time a bogus MSM-celebrated research screed like Arming America came out, an army of researchers could sell their debunking research to anyoen wishing to debunk the Arming America-style tract.
Anyone else with thoughts/suggestions, feel free to email me at the yahoo address I listed three posts above (resp to Ray).
thibaud – what you are describing sounds alot like a “wiki” (see wikipedia.com)
Link…
Cool, thanks, Jonathan. I’m really interested more in pricing, and transferring ownership of, content that’s more often than not highly time-sensitive, news primarily. The price mechanism is the best means of bringing massive amounts of such info into the blogosphere.
One q re the Wiki communities: how do you assign or preserve ownership of intellectual property?
thibaud
I have a feeling that blogs will mutate and develop rather naturally in the direction(s) you describe, and certainly in other directions we can’t even imagine.
The evolution will have both Darwinian and Lamarckian features, of course.
Jamie Irons
Only very slightly OT…
Many here have complained that the left tends uncritically to see its version of reality as The Truth, and no questions may be or need be asked.
I’ve been looking around for an instance of someone on the left putting this persepctive in plain language, and here it is, from Bruce Springsteen (via Howard Kurtz, WaPo):
One almost has to pity a soul who must derive “enormous sustenance” from the likes of Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman…
Jamie Irons
Thibaud,
The address you listed apparently doesn’t work. Mine is ray@rap.midco.net
Intellectual property is automatically registered (and protected) simply by using the circled R for registration when publishing. I would imagine the same is true for blogging.
Revenue generated would be from anyone that would buy the stories, similar to AP. A download function for publications could automatically bill the publication. Revenue to the original authors would be on a per word (or line) used. Authors would be identified by initials or numbers. Ownership would be a function of submittal time. This would make everyone an author and could actually generate income.
By having an index for the unedited Yin, those with ideas don’t have to wait for a thread to develop at one of the existing blogs in order to begin a story.
For example, If I wish to input a story on Bush and fighter planes (like Jerry above), I could look at the list of subjects from the menu: Politics, Aircraft, and generate a story. It would appear in the unedited Yin. If it survived the first edit by an Associate editor, and progressed to 20 lines in Yang, it would appear as a news story with Jerry’s ID#. If it were picked up by 32 newspapers, and Jerry recieved $1 per line per newspaper, Jerry would recieve $20 X 32, or $640. A load or weight factor would make the story cost more for a large newspaper than for a small one.
Ray Elliott
David Thompson:
Houston Chronicle is Very Liberal:
Well, I grew up in the Houston Metro area, and only moved away from there back in ’99, so it is quite fresh on my mind. Since then, I have been in the New Orleans area, and am now in the Atlanta area. So, I’ve had first hand experience not only with the Chronicle, but also with the Post (before it was “Absorbed”), and the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the AJC.
Now, I’m leaving the Post out of this because that one is ancient history. But of the remaining 3, I’d say that the Chronicle is the LEAST liberal of the bunch. Not that that is any glowing reccomendation of them, mind you. But they aren’t the worst by any means.
I check in on them quite often. Not only can I get something resembling news about the old hometown there (How else am I going to find out how Clear Lake is doing this season? Great! They are undefeated so far! Woo Hoo!), but they have a decent on-line comics section — much better than what the AJC has in the dead tree edition, and the AJC doesn’t even do on-line funnies. Let Me Tell Ya, the Funny Pages are Important! And the Chronicle’s outdoor sports writers are some of the best and most prolific in the business — the AJC has a total of ZERO outdoor writers, where the Chronicle has 3 good ones. While there’s some geographical differences, I still find what they have to be useful even here. Oh, I’m an avid sport-fisherman by the way, so that’s a big thing to me. The Times-Picayune was only slightly better than the AJC, in that at least they had some fishing reports. The AJC has NOTHING. No reports, No articles, NOTHING! Hiss, Boo! And as for the rest of the paper? I’ve started referring to them as “Pravda South”, if that gives you any clue…
Jamie–
Not off topic at all. SPringsteen’s comments are music to the ears of a marketing director. They validate the niche strategy that I’d bet the suits are pushing hard on Pinch right now.
This is still more evidence of the decline of the MSM from high-trust papers/outlets “of record” into lifestyle guides whose mission’s no different from that of their peers like Rolling Stone or Martha Stewart’s Living or Guns n Ammo.
When Bruce talks about “sustenance”, he doesn’t mean “intellectual sustenance,” or intellectual challenge or intellectual stimulation. He’s referring to the same kind of emotional and cultural fix, the sense of belonging and community, that some people get from their church, others from following soap opera stars, still others from the Steelers or Packers or Cowboys, and others from logging onto their favorite home improvement or poetry or polyamory site.
The Times is not about news anymore. It’s a kind of daily catechism designed to rally the spirits of and propagating a sense of community among a few hundred thousand increasingly desperate and beleagured urban liberals of a certain age. Think The Nation meets Graydon Carter’s Vanity Fair.
Thibaud,
The above is a rudimentary business plan. The financing is simple. The audience is massive. I think Roger mentioned yesterday 100,000 visits to this site in one day, and 30,000 responses to his survey in three days.
Interesting.
Ray Elliott
ray@rap.midco.net
“thinking .. that serious news outlets would never pick up this kind of nonsense. Wrong again.”
What, has this been pciked up by Fox or CNN?
“Never underestimate the partisan illiteracy of CBS”
Oh, you mean them! Do you *really* still consider them a “serious news outlet?”
Bruce… Bruce… Bruce…
Sustenance from Krugman and Dowd!?!? There’s more sustenance in a dirty-water dog wit ‘kraut. I’ve tried my best to ignore The Boss’ politics ’cause I like his music a whole lot, even when the lyrics go dumb, but anyone who finds sustenance in Krugman and Dowd is just plain Fuckin’ stupid.
Knucklehead:
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Personally, I think the best commentary on this phenomenon is from Ol’ Alice Himself:
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40127
gb_in_ga:
Thanks for the laugh.
See Alice at the Palace
Where her name adorns the board.
She ain’t no flash in the pan,
She’s got the willpower of a horse.
One ol’ timer to another
BTW, I got some ol’ time Souther US “libertarian” roots. The clan, Scot refugees, dates back in the US to 1767 or 1793 depending on which narrative one believes. I once saw the family bible that carried scribbles dated back to ’93, but it was destroyed in a fire. What a shame. Started as indentured sharecroppers in GA best anyone can figure out. Never a slave owner anyone knows about or will admit to. Apparently were part of the “This war ain’t none o’ my business so leave me out of it.” Alabama contingent similar to the the folks described in Cold Mountain (the book, not the movie – didn’t see the movie).
Morgan — Milli grazi!
Bruce Springsteen is not indicative of anything but the opinions of over paid rockers who fail to grasp that the times they are achanging.
Springsteen was not representative of American public opinion before there was Fox news and he is not now. I think that what Fox has done more than anything is to impress upon a certain class of people in this country that there are the ones who are weird.
They never realized that until now. Bruce thought everyone was a caviar socialist just like him, made tons of money and hated de man.
KnuckleHead:
Hey! No Problem!
As for myself, I don’t know that I have deep, cultural “Ol’ Southern Libertarian” roots. Mine seem to be more old family Texan, dating back to the Revolution — Texas Revolution, that is. There’s not any Scottish there at all, that I can tell, meaning I’ve no ancestral claim on the Klan, but there’s quite a bit of Central European and Amer-Indian. Which is normal for Texans. I’m not at all aware of any slave owning from that time, and I know of one well known ancestor who, when the Big War started in ’61 pulled up and headed north to sit it out up there — he was written up on that by the OTHER JFK in his book, if that gives you any clue as to his identity. Ah, a little family scandal…
As for the Libertarian end of it, I came about that all by my lonesome. I took a good hard look at myself and at the political landscape and tried to find the best match. Well, not that good of a match, anyway, since they are still fruitcakes. My parents were both JFK style Kennedy-ites, and then supporters of LBJ, both were employed by NASA contractors — that’s how we ended up in the Houston area. It was job protection for them, more than anything else. My Grandmother on my mother’s side was a big time Republican Activist, though — it made for some REALLY interesting discussion at the dinner table at times. I still remember Grandmother going on about Goldwater…
gb!
Please note – I was talking about a small “c” clan, not the big “K” Klan! Its the whole celtic tribal thing, man, not the get hooded and hang ‘em high thing.
Knucklehead:
Understood, but, well, the Big “K” kind patterened itself after the small “c” kind, and largely draws from that pool, at least in the beginning. That’s why they named themselves that, IIRC. I don’t fit in either one.