Blogs and Joe Hallett
Hey Folks -
A while back Joe Hallett wrote a column in the Columbus Dispatch knocking blogs. More recently on NPR an author harped on the danger of the internet; it's undercutting the authority of "mainstream media" our culture's "gate keepers," he says; and he trusts the gate keepers (like the Columbus Dispatch) to tell us what we need to know. That's good enough; we don't need to be confused by know-nothing web-talkers like me.
Well, if one believes that the major networks, Fox, CNN, PBS; clear channel talk, NPR, and conservative to moderate-right newspapers/news services are all we need, fine. But that doesn't make it for me.
Listen to the NPR story at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11131872
Part of Mr. Hallett's column follows my Open Letter to him below.
- Uke Man
Dear Mr. Hallett,
I haven’t studied blogs (I haven’t made an effort to talk with blogmakers), but I nevertheless feel qualified to suggest a few things.
1. I believe you are right about numbers of readers on individual blogs being relatively small, but if you add all the readers of blogs that offer views divergent from the status quo Republicrat or Demican or Businessprenure "lines" presented in the “mainstream” press, the disparity narrows.
2. I’m not precisely sure of what you meant by “get their politics,” but it could imply that readers simply read and incorporate whatever the media feeds them. And presently they get much more of their mind-washing (their "politics"?) from the newspapers rather than blogs.
Newspapers and blogs can both be used that way, but I think it’s actually radio and TV that do the lion’s share of feeding the uncritical what they are supposed to think. Such a function, whoever provides it, is not an honorable activity, however – not in a democracy. Moreover, the traditional media isn't necessarily to be trusted anymore than blogs.
3. If, instead you meant getting (first hand) and reporting factual information relevant to politics, then certainly most blogs don’t do that. That doesn’t mean, however, that blogs “are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs.”
Everyone is an ideologue (whether they know it or not). I went to the two sites you held up as better blogs. Both are clearly ideological. The Dispatch is ideological. Maybe the editorial board at your paper would claim that they allow their reporters complete freedom to dig independently into anything, find the facts and report them and their meaning without political consideration (i.e. without "twisting" anything). I can’t believe, however, that any newspaper does that. I don't see how ANYONE can honestly think so.
So, we come to the real point and value of blogs (and, at the same time, the largest threat to the status quo). Most blogs are not created to pursue investigative reporting. They exist to give people a chance to publish INTERPRETATIONS of the facts presented by the “mainstream” media (and others); interpretations that do not appear in the mainstream. That is what motivates bloggers, and what frightens those whom Dispatch editorialists have, for years, called “opinion makers.”
As with the invention of the printing press and the contemporaneous Protestant Revolution, blogs are revolutionary. The people cannot be kept as quiet as before; they cannot be as easily guided by the mysterious priests with their secret, authoritative understanding of the truth inscribed in a Latinate Bible (unintelligible to the common man) nor can they be as easily guided by the official "politics" handed down by the culturally designated "opinion makers" (who are supposedly to be taken as gospel ??). The official line and talking points of those with the capital to own and propagate them have less of a monopoly; Blogging gives the people the means to “publish” their own truths without having to get past the "gate keepers."
Don’t think so? Why then does China insist on controlling the net? Why have our troops been ordered to stop blogging? Hmmmmmmmmmm . . .
Moreover, the fact that I and other bloggers don’t do hands-on investigative reporting has no bearing on the value of what we publish. As you know, before we went to war, based upon the “facts” we all had studied, I urged the Dispatch to oppose the war. Based on those same “facts,” the Dispatch decided to support going to war. I rest my case.
I hope you will reconsider your view of blogs. There are, as with everything, negative aspects, but I don’t believe that all of your recent criticisms are valid.
Yours - Tom Harker
From your column:
"On the matter of political blogs, Schultz and I were in lockstep. Their importance is overblown and their readership, although growing, still is a fraction of those readers who rely on newspapers to get their politics.
Little original reporting comes from political blogs. Exceptions in Ohio include rightangleblog.com and its counterpart on the liberal side, buckeyestateblog.com, whose authors at least make an effort to talk with newsmakers. Mostly, though, political blogs are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs such as www.dispatch.com/politics."
A while back Joe Hallett wrote a column in the Columbus Dispatch knocking blogs. More recently on NPR an author harped on the danger of the internet; it's undercutting the authority of "mainstream media" our culture's "gate keepers," he says; and he trusts the gate keepers (like the Columbus Dispatch) to tell us what we need to know. That's good enough; we don't need to be confused by know-nothing web-talkers like me.
Well, if one believes that the major networks, Fox, CNN, PBS; clear channel talk, NPR, and conservative to moderate-right newspapers/news services are all we need, fine. But that doesn't make it for me.
Listen to the NPR story at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11131872
Part of Mr. Hallett's column follows my Open Letter to him below.
- Uke Man
Dear Mr. Hallett,
I haven’t studied blogs (I haven’t made an effort to talk with blogmakers), but I nevertheless feel qualified to suggest a few things.
1. I believe you are right about numbers of readers on individual blogs being relatively small, but if you add all the readers of blogs that offer views divergent from the status quo Republicrat or Demican or Businessprenure "lines" presented in the “mainstream” press, the disparity narrows.
2. I’m not precisely sure of what you meant by “get their politics,” but it could imply that readers simply read and incorporate whatever the media feeds them. And presently they get much more of their mind-washing (their "politics"?) from the newspapers rather than blogs.
Newspapers and blogs can both be used that way, but I think it’s actually radio and TV that do the lion’s share of feeding the uncritical what they are supposed to think. Such a function, whoever provides it, is not an honorable activity, however – not in a democracy. Moreover, the traditional media isn't necessarily to be trusted anymore than blogs.
3. If, instead you meant getting (first hand) and reporting factual information relevant to politics, then certainly most blogs don’t do that. That doesn’t mean, however, that blogs “are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs.”
Everyone is an ideologue (whether they know it or not). I went to the two sites you held up as better blogs. Both are clearly ideological. The Dispatch is ideological. Maybe the editorial board at your paper would claim that they allow their reporters complete freedom to dig independently into anything, find the facts and report them and their meaning without political consideration (i.e. without "twisting" anything). I can’t believe, however, that any newspaper does that. I don't see how ANYONE can honestly think so.
So, we come to the real point and value of blogs (and, at the same time, the largest threat to the status quo). Most blogs are not created to pursue investigative reporting. They exist to give people a chance to publish INTERPRETATIONS of the facts presented by the “mainstream” media (and others); interpretations that do not appear in the mainstream. That is what motivates bloggers, and what frightens those whom Dispatch editorialists have, for years, called “opinion makers.”
As with the invention of the printing press and the contemporaneous Protestant Revolution, blogs are revolutionary. The people cannot be kept as quiet as before; they cannot be as easily guided by the mysterious priests with their secret, authoritative understanding of the truth inscribed in a Latinate Bible (unintelligible to the common man) nor can they be as easily guided by the official "politics" handed down by the culturally designated "opinion makers" (who are supposedly to be taken as gospel ??). The official line and talking points of those with the capital to own and propagate them have less of a monopoly; Blogging gives the people the means to “publish” their own truths without having to get past the "gate keepers."
Don’t think so? Why then does China insist on controlling the net? Why have our troops been ordered to stop blogging? Hmmmmmmmmmm . . .
Moreover, the fact that I and other bloggers don’t do hands-on investigative reporting has no bearing on the value of what we publish. As you know, before we went to war, based upon the “facts” we all had studied, I urged the Dispatch to oppose the war. Based on those same “facts,” the Dispatch decided to support going to war. I rest my case.
I hope you will reconsider your view of blogs. There are, as with everything, negative aspects, but I don’t believe that all of your recent criticisms are valid.
Yours - Tom Harker
From your column:
"On the matter of political blogs, Schultz and I were in lockstep. Their importance is overblown and their readership, although growing, still is a fraction of those readers who rely on newspapers to get their politics.
Little original reporting comes from political blogs. Exceptions in Ohio include rightangleblog.com and its counterpart on the liberal side, buckeyestateblog.com, whose authors at least make an effort to talk with newsmakers. Mostly, though, political blogs are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs such as www.dispatch.com/politics."
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