Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell have a thoughtful and accurate article on how blogs impact media in Foreign Policy;
Blogs are becoming more influential because they affect the content of international media coverage. Journalism professor Todd Gitlin once noted that media frame reality through “principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters.” Increasingly, journalists and pundits take their cues about “what matters” in the world from weblogs. For salient topics in global affairs, the blogosphere functions as a rare combination of distributed expertise, real-time collective response to breaking news, and public-opinion barometer. What’s more, a hierarchical structure has taken shape within the primordial chaos of cyberspace.
[…]
[E]ven as the blogosphere continues to expand, only a few blogs are likely to emerge as focal points. These prominent blogs serve as a mechanism for filtering interesting blog posts from mundane ones. When less renowned bloggers write posts with new information or a new slant, they will contact one or more of the large focal point blogs to publicize their posts. In this manner, poor blogs function as fire alarms for rich blogs, alerting them to new information and links. This self-perpetuating, symbiotic relationship allows interesting arguments and information to make their way to the top of the blogosphere.
The skewed network of the blogosphere makes it less time-consuming for outside observers to acquire information. The media only need to look at elite blogs to obtain a summary of the distribution of opinions on a given political issue.
The mainstream political media can therefore act as a conduita between the blogosphere and politically powerful actors. The comparative advantage of blogs in political discourse, as compared to traditional media, is their low cost of real-time publication. Bloggers can post their immediate reactions to important political events before other forms of media can respond. Speed also helps bloggers overcome their own inaccuracies. When confronted with a factual error, they can quickly correct or update their post. Through these interactions, the blogosphere distills complex issues into key themes, providing cues for how the media should frame and report a foreign-policy question.
And from the sublime to the ridiculous – Des Moines Register sports writer Nancy Clark offers several journalistic gems in a rant featured at Captain’s Quarters;
In the new “journalism of assertion,” as the report calls it, information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its voracity.
Voracity. Yes, the Exempt Media gets voracious in its attempts to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their readers, especially those who deign to criticize their work. Unfortunately, I believe Clark meant “veracity”, which means “truth” and “accuracy”.
Great work so far on the part of the layers of fact-checkers and editors.
Heh.
…The blogosphere distills complex issues into key themes, providing cues for how the media could frame and report a n y policy question no doubt.
There is also a debate value where everyone’s overview is improved and advanced.
Letters to the editor in printed media has a little of this function but it is not effective, as the insight or rebuttal will likely be missed in the next issue.
Blogs are win, win, and here to stay. 73s TG
Now, if someone will define “it”. Willy Climton has defined what “is”, is. “It” is the last remaining syloppophical question in the yueninverse.???????
Lincoln blogs
Home � Blog Directory � Interest � Lincoln … Key: Blog titles in RED are members
that have joined in the last five days. Disclaimer: is not responsible …
http://www.britblog.com/directory/interest/Lincoln.html – 14k>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How do we know blogs have arrived?
Craig McLaughlin writes:
I admit I took a wait and see approach ( I should have rememered Cliff Robertson’s advice in
“Midway” that “the wait and see’ers will bust your ass every time”) to the blog thing. But now I’m convinced. What sold me? Was it major newspapers throwing tantrums in print about blogs? No. Was it the likes of Richard Posner or Michael Barone joining the ranks? No. lt was a “Jeopardy” category I saw today called ‘Lincoln blogs.’
You’ve made it.
Posted by Scott at 04:10 PM>>>>> powerline
In terms of actually reading blogs – it’s great to know that they are having an influence – but I’m suspicious because really most of us are only going to the sites that distill our own particular political vision. As a habit there is only one site I visit regularly that would be defined as outside my political views. I suspect this is true of most every bloggers. It’s something like preaching to the choir. I’m of the opinion that most MSM writers who check blogs do the same as us regular folks looking only the verify there own thoughts and not what the opposition is saying.
That being said – I’m glad the Blogoshpere has emerged, and maybe in time the MSM will respond appropriately, rather then with these ill concieved rants. As Ed say’s – if they did their job properly in the first place … But with Dan Rather and the Bush documents it was always personal. Dan Rather hates the Bushes, all of them, beyond reason, and should never have been allowed near that story.
These murderous acts are getting little notice in the MSM. Why? Are not many of the perps from Jamaica & etc.? Notice it says “a man”; why not a black man, a brown man, a white man, a yellow man, a green man…
Multiculturalism is killing people in Toronto; criminals rule the streets; the Librano$$$$$ policies have spawned this bloodshed. Down with the Librano$$$$$$$$$
TORONTO – A man in his 20s was shot in the abdomen last night at about 7 p.m. outside the front yard of a 51 Morecambe Gate townhouse that fronts onto Victoria Park Ave., north of Finch Ave. East. He was rushed to Sunnybrook hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His death brings to 17 the number of victims hit by gunfire in Toronto in two weeks, five of whom have been killed. (Toronto Sun)
primetimecrime.com
This commenter says that blogs have scared the beejazes out of the left liberal/socialists. Correct, a thousand times correct! Go bloggers/commenters; as the cliche has it, the genie is out of the bottle.>>
These are the very people that Orwell warned us against. The inheritors of the Fabian gradualist tradition. But, their analysis has run completely out of explanatory power and has become “duck speak”. Formuliac hexes and spells, like trying to use a buggy whip as an automobile accelerator.
Is it any wonder that the rise of the blog has scared them so? Blogs like the Belmont Club and many others are speaking our truth to their power.
Examining history, as this essay does, are important counter measures in the continuing deconstruction of the socialist myth.
The best part? It is not buried in an obscure journal on the fifth floor or the library.>>>
http://www.rapp.org/url/?2S11008G
Belmont Club by Wretchard.
The socialist myth is being deconstructed/torn apart with the blogs in the vanguard. Down with socialism.
Toronto no longer identifies suspects. There were too many blacks being fingered for crimes and the Toronto Star did away with identifying color. Don’t know how they get around it when they have to show pics identifying them. I did some work for Ont. gov’t during Bob Rae’s rule. Power outages were known as brownouts, so as to be non-offensive to anybody. I’m surprised the Toronto Sun has followed suit. Maybe they were told to refrain from using blacks, African-Canadians (?)or whatever. I think it’s time for the Western Standard to change its name and go mainstream. It’s worthy of a more national audience, and I suspect would convert its share of voters. But Western Standard sounds too regional.