Another blogger rumble
by henrycopelandMonday, February 28th, 2005
The blogosphere and Larry Summers, summarized by NYTimes.com:
Today’s Internet-driven, media-saturated era is promoting two things inimical to the sort of absolute power Harvard’s leaders have long been used to: transparency and the ability of like-minded people to network easily. …The Internet has played an unprecedented role, both in spreading the news and in rallying the troops on both sides. The liberal blogosphere has taken up the controversy energetically: a single anti-Summers post on Daily Kos drew more than 800 comments, some from Harvard alumni. Other sites have posted the main documents in the dispute, and are encouraging people to contact the media. Mr. Summers is being defended by conservative blogs and studentsforlarry.org, which has an online petition. Even the normally reclusive Harvard Corporation has posted a letter supporting Mr. Summers on an alumni Web site.
Let’s run through the list of people the blogosphere, history’s most powerful tool for transparency and networking like-minded people, has significantly helped or hurt: Clinton (1998), Lott (2002), Raines (2003), Dean (fall 2003), Rather (October 2004), Bush (October 2004), Jordan (January 2004), Gannon (February 2004), Summers (February 2004).
Bush? Why Bush? Because he might well have lost if the blogs hadn’t broken Rathergate.
Notice the acceleration? Graph those and it looks kinda like a seismograph leading up to a 9.0 earthquake.
(Imagine Watergate on blogs.)
March 3rd, 2005 at Mar 03, 05 | 10:19 pm
*Blogs* impacted Clinton in ‘98?
You’re reaching hard, man.
*Usenet*, I could see. It borders on the delusionary to count blogs in that scene.
March 9th, 2005 at Mar 09, 05 | 8:08 pm
OK, one blog. I’m counting Drudge as an early blogger.
Close enough?
He was the guy that first put all this stuff on the map. Remember Drudge’s speech to the Washington Press Corp in the summer of ‘99?
“The Internet is going to save the news business. I envision a future where there’ll be 300 million reporters, where anyone from anywhere can report for any reason. It’s freedom of participation absolutely realized.”
http://www.libertyroundtable.org/library/essay.drudge.html
March 9th, 2005 at Mar 09, 05 | 9:00 pm
Hell, Henry; I remember him posting to alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater in 1995. I also remember the Washington Post ripping me off for lines there (and I wasn’t the only one), too, although I’m pretty sure that didn’t count for putting anything “on the map”. There was a great deal that they didn’t touch the way they should have.
I remember Drudge’s ‘99 speech. I also remember writing this —
http://www.no-treason.com/Beck/b1.php
– more than eighteen months earlier for J. Orlin Grabbe’s website, and the thing had been clear to me a lot longer than that.
<blockquote>“In the meanwhile, little people of ordinary (i.e.: natural) rational faculty are finding their own channels to and from each other. The practical effect of this is that the concept of a “peer” is tested every day, by and among them. If one says something that makes sense, one is granted a natural authority more powerful than any ever assumed by election, or sneaked past the invisible market hand which packages hand-waving assumptions a few pages apart from the latest stock quotes.
This is the Internet: where peers make the sensible grade with every post, and cranks are great fun. “</blockquote>So; we’re stretching out the definition of “blogging” to something like “anyone reporting from anywhere for any reason”. This was going on ten years ago, anyway. Drudge never did anything that very many other people weren’t doing before him, if we’re going to qualify the thing like that.
The thing I always hate to see is people writing history of this sort of thing as if it all sprang-forth fully-blown from an example like Drudge. It’s simply not true, and if we’re going to call him a “blogger” — not from the form of his work (i.e.; on the Web instead of Usenet), but from its essence as “reporting from anywhere, anytime” — then it’s not fair to a lot of people who devoted themselves to excellent work back when the Web stars of today weren’t even an echo in anyone’s modem.
(BTW — your preview function is spitting and hissing at me, so I’m not sure what this is going to look like after I send it. Here we go.)