The blogosphere is having a great time dissecting this NYTimes article about how left-wing blogs are desperately trying to get their message heard in the mainstream media:
...a group of bloggers is trying to use old-fashioned telephone conference calls to share their ideas with newspaper and television journalists. The bloggers, who describe themselves as liberal or progressive, say the conference calls are intended to counter what they regard as the much stronger influence of conservative pundits online. Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, the host of the two calls so far, views them as a step toward getting their reports out to mainstream news organizations.
Not surprisingly, the conservative blogs feel they have greater influence because they focus more on facts and debunkings than on conspiracy theories:
Asked what lessons liberal and progressive bloggers could learn from the experience of FreeRepublic, Mr. Taylor replied that while "I'm loath to give them advice," they might have to outgrow the conspiracy-theory stage of blogging to produce reports that are credible and relevant to a wider audience."In the old days of FreeRepublic," he said, "we had all kinds of black helicopters" and speculation about the effect of the Y2K problem. After the world did not end on Jan. 1, 2000, he said, "We tried to be more realistic."
I must say that this has been my experience too. Wizbang says it well:
At the end of the day it comes down to content. If the lefty blogs were on the right side of the facts, the media would find them. Rather than trying to manipulate the media thru conference calls, why don't the liberal bloggers just get on their blogs and find something impressive to say?But Noooo... Rather than compete in the arena of ideas, they want a "media subsidy" to "level the playing field."
They want affirmative action for boring bloggers.
I'm very happy to have a blog that readers come to for statistics lessons and fiskings of hysterical anti-testing rants. That's much more useful content than a blog where the main topic is, say, how President Bush is evil and wants to keep every minority child from graduating high school.
Posted by kswygert at March 14, 2005 11:21 AM