Recently in New Media Category

Yeah! I got up early enough to write a quick blog post. I've checked the news. It damn near put me back to sleep. What news that is out there is being pressed into service as the next worst thing to ever happen in our nation. It's a shtick that right wing radio has had down pat for decades, but now it seems as if the Legacy Media and the various blogs are flagging that old approach well past it's death.

Yeesh. It's just a slow news day. Seriously. After 7 plus years of BushCo™, I suspect we are going to find ourselves bored with the lack of sensationalism. No one, and I mean no one, is going to displace BushCo™ as the most controversial United States administration in modern times.

We are all going to be like drunks looking for that elusive intoxication. Try as we might, we will never feel that exhilaration we first felt as we published a post about the latest outrage from the impertinent son of a misplaced New Englander.

Our drug of choice has actually been gone for quite some time. He's gone into hiding now that his popularity has sunk lower then Nixon's.

So, like any good addict, we've switched; thus lies the explanation of our fascination with Sarah Palin. In my using days, if I couldn't get pot, I got drunk. In today's blogging milieu, if we can't have our BushCo™ story, by God, we've got Sarah to take it's place. It's the same cheap, tawdry content, only with a feminine label.

Soon, though, she'll be empty. Then what? Write outrage over Obama? Does anyone really think that Barack will be as incompetent, as amoral, as ignorant as George W. Bush? If anyone out there thinks that; put down the pipe, back away, and check yourself into treatment. Or the psych ward. Because, DAMN, your either high or psychotic. Or both.

The Savaging of Scott McClellan continues. But it is not just the right that is tearing him apart. Several of our own progressive members of Blogstonia appear to be piling on just as righteously. Over at TPM, there are continued posts of Scott's past statements that, by his own recent admission, were misleading and lies. And yet, despite his admissions, he is being ridiculed, mocked, and smeared.

Was David Brock, a man most of us know to have been instrumental in the defamation, and eventual impeachment of Bill Clinton, held to this level of scorn and ridicule? Obviously not, considering his website, Media Matters, is the go-to site for all things propaganda.

Over the last 6 plus years, since the run up to the invasion of Iraq, a nation obviously not capable of mounting any type of attack against us, we have been demanding that the administration acknowledge it's propaganda agenda. Time and again, on blogs and websites across the progressive spectrum, there has been anger and disgust at the lack of honesty and forthrightness.

Now, finally, Scott McClellan steps forward, announces quite loudly, and convincingly, that the Bush administration used propaganda in the run up to the invasion, and what does he receive? Our derision and scorn.

"Where the hell were you back in 2002? Why the hell did you not resign in protest back then?" Here are some links: CampusProgress, The Register-Guardian, MetaFilter, Oliver Willis, All Spin Zone.

Stop. It. Seriously. Stop it right now.

Scott McClellan has stepped forward, just like David Brock, just like Paul O'Neill, just like Richard Clarke. Now, when those three stepped forward, did it make a difference? Did Paul O"Neill's account of the fiasco that is the Bush administration's handling of the economy make things change? Doh! Of course not. Did David Brock's admission of being instrumental in the propaganda machine -- The Mighty Wurlitzer -- of the conservative right result in the failure of the propaganda machine? Do I need to type Doh! again? And do I really need to point out the lack of serious security despite Richard Clarke's admissions? Yeah, I thought not.

Okay, maybe Scott could have done the honorable thing and bowed out earlier. In the end, it would not have mattered one iota. They simply would have filled his position with another mouth piece. Gee, in fact, they've done it twice since he's left.

So, how about instead of bitching about what he didn't do, because it doesn't really matter, and take comfort in what he has done. Because, unlike David, Paul, and Richard, Scott's book, and it's timing, might actually prevent the invasion of Iran. He has become an ally to our cause. How about we accept him?

Besides, if you really want to bitch about someone doing the right thing and preventing this mess, how about you bitch about this. Because, in the end, having a different man as president would have been the only way to prevent the failure that is the Bush administration.

Army Of Dude on Memorial Day.

No, not leaning left, but restoring balance.

Star Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO - They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece -- not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing workforce of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers profess a love of the nonstop action. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Once again, it's blame everything except the personal choices made by people. I usually don't speak ill of the dead, but in this case I have to speak out. It is not that a blogger's lifestyle kills, it is that people choose to work the hours they do, and live the life they live.

What is it with people? Something new comes along that makes a major impact on society, and those not benefiting from, or participating in, the new trend, decide it is evil and dangerous.

Cue Shatner; Get a life, people.

Actually, stop being so fraking scared. Your way of life is not going to disappear in a flash of bright light, leaving you destitute and hopeless. So some people lived life as they chose, and possibly burned themselves out to the point of death. It was their choice of lifestyle, not a diabolical new industry, that killed them.

New York Times

Of the many landmarks along a journalist's career, two are among those that stand out: winning an award and making the government back down. Last week, Joshua Micah Marshall achieved both.

On Tuesday, it was announced that he had won a George Polk Award for legal reporting for coverage of the firing of eight United States attorneys, critics charged under political circumstances. The "tenacious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales," the citation read.

Also last week, the Justice Department put him back on its mailing list for reporters with credentials after removing him last year.

Mr. Marshall does not belong to any traditional news organization. Instead, he is creating his own. His Web site, Talking Points Memo (www.talkingpointsmemo.com), is the first Internet-only news operation to receive the Polk (though in 2003, an award for Internet reporting was given to the Center for Public Integrity), and certainly one of the most influential political blogs in the country.

I remember when Josh was simply a lone blogger. Way to go Josh! Congratulations on establishing an on line News Media Company. So, is a Pulitzer on the way?

Commercial Appeal

Memphis blogger Thaddeus Matthews is nobody's idea of an objective reporter. But local authorities should follow the same set of rules in dealing with bloggers as they would follow with established media.

Like him or not, Matthews is among a growing cadre of Internet savvy communicators who are using the Internet to democratize journalism. When he obtained and gave his readers a draft statement from the suspect in the murder of police officer Edward Vidulich, he was using a common journalistic tool. Snatching that tool from the hands of journalists of any stripe ultimately damages the public's ability to hold the government accountable.

Offered without comment.

Paul Krugman

What I found striking about the whole thing was the contempt the pundit consensus showed for the public - it was, more or less, "Oh, people just can't resist a man in uniform." But it turns out that they can; it's the punditocracy that can't.

Oh, it looks like Paul is going to take to blogging just fine.

Paul Krugman

On the political side, you might have expected rising inequality to produce a populist backlash. Instead, however, the era of rising inequality has also been the era of "movement conservatism," the term both supporters and opponents use for the highly cohesive set of interlocking institutions that brought Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich to power, and reached its culmination, taking control of all three branches of the federal government, under George W. Bush. (Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy.)

The New York Times stops charging for their Op-Ed columnists, and Paul Krugman starts writing a blog. Two miracles in one day.

nypost.com

According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692." A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.

So, a free market economy can only be free when it's for the benefit of the rabid right wing blogsphere. But Lordy, Lordy, look out when suddenly a business exercises it's freedom to set it's rates that benefit a left wing group. Then the whole concept of free market economy ain't looking so good.

My God, get a mop. There's blood all over the floors at the various rabid right wing blogs. It's all those exploding heads.

Richard Blair over at ASZ has come up with a term that really makes sense to me. While Kos and company have settled on "Traditional Media" (Fox is traditional?) Richard has coined a term that just seems to fit the bill. Legacy Media.

Deprecating legacy systems as new technology became available. In the information systems world, the word "legacy" implies outdated and inefficient hardware and processes to deliver data. And that's the place where I think the U.S. media resides.

In describing the media, I don't think that anyone wants to imply that the information points they provide us (the data, if you will) is, by default, incorrect or faulty. Taking in news in the information age that we're in is like drinking from a fire hose. There's just so much information, and too little time for reporters and editors to properly distill and analyze the raw information (for the most part). By the time that a true commentator or analyst has actually looked at the data points and drawn some supportable conclusions, everyone else in the world has moved on, because information continues to flow in a torrent.

So, if I use the term "legacy media", it's not really a derogatory or dismissive term. It's describing a media that, by it's own admission and financial results, is losing ground rapidly to our own ability to distill and interpret raw information (such as we do daily, here on Kos and other internet venues). But "legacy" also implies that there was (and is) value in both the methodologies and processes that bring us the information.

Honestly, it just fits.