How The Media Covers The Blogosphere

26 Jan, 2004 by John Hawkins

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Last night, I listened to a two hour long show on National Public Radio called, “The Blogging of the President.” To be blunt, it was punishingly dull. The show featured a host who knew almost nothing about blogging, columnists like Richard Reeves and Frank Rich who knew almost nothing about blogging, callers who for the most part knew almost nothing about blogging, and really boring bloggers like Joshua Micah Marshall and Ed Cone being duller than I thought was humanly possible. The only interesting part of the show was the end where Atrios, Andrew Sullivan, & Jeff Jarvis were going back and forth.

You know, we see programs and articles like this all the time and usually, they’re not very good. So can I make some suggestions to these old media types who are trying to learn something about blogs?

#1) How about taking a few minutes to talk to some bloggers and learn what the heck blogging is all about? How hard is that?

#2) Stop talking to snooty journalism professors and condescending columnists who aren’t even bloggers. Asking someone like Frank Rich about blogging is like asking Magic Johnson to be a commentator on Monday Night Football. He may be a big name, but does he know enough to talk about it intelligently?

#3) Talk to some fresh faces. There are so many GREAT blogging stories out there for a journalist to explore. Bloggers who; are anonymous, have moved from left to right, done great charity work, have risen from obscurity to notoriety.

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs for example has gone from being a nobody to being read by lots of big name conservative columnists. What about Michele Catalano at A Small Victory and all the projects and charity work she has done through blogging? How about Scott Ott at Scrappleface, a humor blogger who is now published in the Weekly Standard? What about Steven Den Beste, Bill Quick, Citizen Smash, Daily Kos, or Dean Esmay?