Pacific Views

Should We Subscribe In Self Defense?

A DFA commentor left a WSJ article laying out for all the peons to see. It's entitled "Blogs Have Become Part of Media Machine That Shapes Politics", by Lee Gomes, as the latest installment in his regular Portals column. The main point of the article seems to be that online campaigning has become a necessity in politics, and is now being embraced by the establishment. Some excerpts:

...Blogs, for instance, have been closely identified with the Dean campaign from the start. These are personal, frequently updated Web pages that typically contain short essays on sundry topics. The early Dean blogs, created by backers of the former Vermont governor, had an earnest charm to them. They were fully supportive of the candidate, of course, but had a quirky and independent cast, on account of being free of the spin of the official campaign.

Now, not only does every major candidate have a blog, but new political blogs are being added daily. These blogs look like America: bitterly divided between pro-Red State and pro-Blue State. ...

Is it just me, or would a casual reading of this passage give someone the impression that blogging started with the Dean campaign? It actually sounds like a great storyline for dismissing blogging entirely, by making it appear to be the product of the 'tech bubble' campaign. (Am I the only one tired of hearing that really insightful reference?) Or at the least, a good way to dismiss homegrown blogs, and mislead people about the original intent of blogging.

Here goes another whopper:

...In recent weeks, one of the newest and most effective political uses of the Web came from the Bush-Cheney campaign, which e-mailed six million supporters a link to an online ad portraying John Kerry as beholden to special interests.

Aside from production costs for the ad, the ploy cost next to nothing. Yet it not only got the message in front of millions of eyeballs, it led to the TV networks carrying long segments of the commercial. The Kerry team has since tried the tactic itself. ...

I guess Mr. Gomes has never heard of MoveOn. He does say earlier in the article that, "What makes for a good political blog is usually a function of one's politics," and the only site he mentions by name is the Drudge Report. So I thought at first pass that perhaps he's just ignorant enough to believe that the Bush-Cheney campaign has, to date, made any original contributions to online politics.

He puts himself on the hook, though, by having also said this:

...A debate is under way now in blogging circles over such ethical questions as whether "mainstream" blogs should publish the results from election-day exit polls before the polls actually close. Traditional media refrain, worried about driving down turnout on account of voters staying home after hearing that their candidate was winning or losing. (Actually, a better reason to hold off is that exit polls have been exceedingly inaccurate of late.) ...

Which can only be referring to a dispute between Daily Kos and CJR about Kos' posting of exit polls. (Further commentary here.) So he's aware of the left blogosphere and has been paying enough attention to know which blogs are mainstream, at least enough to have noticed an arcane dispute. One started, moreover, by a blog run by the Columbia Journalism Review to try and take advantage of this wild new frontier while scolding bloggers. The likelihood that he's never heard of MoveOn, the Horse, or other such sites, is probably low.

From which we can gather the following options: either 1) he knew better when writing his column and was intentionally misleading, 2) he's never done any substantive (and easy) research on a topic that he's supposed to be an expert on, or 3) that the fact checkers on the WSJ editorial page are the sloppiest gits in the business. Pick one or mix and match, they're all disappointing.