Dear Connie Schultz:
I know it is premature to comment on your new book, "And His Lovely Wife," (about campaigning with your husband, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio). It won’t be published until June 19--but this morning I read an article on it by Joe Hallet in the Columbus Dispatch where Hallet says:
On the matter of political blogs, Schultz and I were in lockstep. Their importance is overblown and their readership, although growing, still is a fraction of those readers who rely on newspapers to get their politics.
Little original reporting comes from political blogs.
(Gang - below the fold I give some examples of DKOS original reporting. Can you add some?)
Hallet continues:
Exceptions in Ohio include rightangleblog.com and its counterpart on the liberal side, buckeyestateblog.com, whose authors at least make an effort to talk with newsmakers. Mostly, though, political blogs are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs such as www.dispatch.com/politics.
Now, let me back up a second. I am posting this to DKOS--and I ask my fellow "overblowners" to take deep breath and NOT flame you before your book is even published.
And, also let me say I am on your side. In fact we met last year at a Sherrod Brown fund-raiser here in Columbus, and you mentioned you had read my posting published here on DKOS, "I want to have a beer with Mrs. Sherrod Brown." (Remember--we both confessed that we don’t like beer.)
So I am not attacking you. But I do want to deal with the meat of the quote above, and answer it with one word. "Duh."
This recurring theme that "blogs will never replace the main stream media"--is a non-issue. No one here claims to attempt that. Most of us on DKOS have day jobs, and we admit we don’t have the resources or time to dig up breaking news.
I think you might be surprised how much news we DO break (more on that later--under SOMETIMES WE DO REPORT NEW NEWS, below), but I think our much greater purpose is to rescue the news that is reported by you guys, and ignored (more on that later too--where I mix some metaphors under CLAPPER AND BELL.)
But first, let me reinforce the obvious, which Hallet admits, and I would hope you address in your book too. That is...
NOT ALL BLOGS ARE EQUAL
Try this: Log on DKOS (the leading reality blog) and Free Republic (the leading right-wing blog), and post a correction to someone’s posting.
(Yes, I use "reality" in place of "left wing." The opposite of right-wing ideological pap is not left-wing ideological pap. The opposite is reality--or our best effort to find it.)
On Free Republic, if you post a correction, you will likely get flamed ("stop hurting the troops") and--unless you promptly apologize to the Politburo, and pledge to adhere to right-think in the future--you will be banned.
Over here on DKOS, generally you will be asked for a source (preferably with a link), and if it turns out to be credible, the diary will be corrected, and you will probably even be thanked. And even if your correction proves faulty--or the diarist is a jerk about it--you won’t be banned.
(It takes a LOT to get banned here. To be perfectly honest, it’s more fun to keep idiots [left and right] around as long as possible to torment them with facts--a favorite spectator sport on our blog, and good practice for talking to one’s Bushista-in-laws.)
(And speaking of sport, I noticed a recurring event here on DKOS: Every month or so, a Freeper shows up and posts a diary earnestly pleading with us "to reason together" on some issue, to which one of us invariably replies: "Great idea! Let’s meet back over at Free Republic and discuss it." And then, silence.)
CLAPPER AND BELL
If you watch Jon Stewart, then you have repeatedly seen the bit in which he plays clips from the day’s news showing right wingers (Tony Snow, Rush, Hannity, etc., etc.) using the EXACT same "Republican talking point of the day" verbiage--and then too often, without missing a beat, the EXACT same words coming out of the mouths of main-stream media meat puppets.
(And a week later--I might add--we find the exact same message in a Ramirez editorial cartoon in the Columbus Dispatch.)
This demonstrates a sad reality: Especially on TV, the so-called mainstream media is a big, dumb, bell--and the clapper is the right-wing noise machine. (Do I sound tinfoil-hatty? I’m not saying anything that Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, and Roger Ailes don’t consistently brag about. They call it "setting the agenda.")
The Chinese have a proverb for this:
"The first dog barks at nothing. The rest bark at him."
I think perhaps the most cogent purpose of DKOS is NOT digging up new news, but trying to be a little dog barking at the real issues: e.g. global warming, not Kayfed (I don’t know how to spell it--and don’t want to know).
We are trying to be a little clapper, hoping in our small way to ding the media bell; not pretending we can replace it.
Except for three cable shows (Colbert, Stewart, and Olbermann) and one weekly seasonal HBO special (Bill Maher), reality blogs are about the only "reality clapper" left.
(Yes, once we had progressive radio, but just try to find it now. Among the hundreds of right-wing stations here in Ohio, we now have one tiny, Class C station-WAIS. And since the last election, Clear Channel has been purging its progressive stations around the country, claiming it’s for "business reasons", although in each case, the replacement has tanked--including last-place far-right-wing WYTS here in Columbus [and yet THEY are kept on the air].)
DON’T ABUSE US, USE US
Earlier this year I ran into one of your fellow Cleveland Plain Dealer reporters at a mutual friend’s wedding.
(BTW, he had high praise for you, mentioning the time you abandoned a date with your future husband to cover a breaking story.)
We talked a little, and I think he was genuinely interested in what I had to say--which was mostly about what I had learned on DKOS.
I admit, there is an off-chance your friend’s thought bubble was "if I nod my head...maybe he’ll go away." But even so, my point is reporters should view DKOS as a resource, not a threat.
Maybe try this: For a few days, come to DKOS and look at the right column to see which diaries have gotten pushed up into the Recommended Diaries list. (I’ve written many diaries, but I’ve only gained that honor once.) If you are brave, you might even try reading all the diaries as they pop up--but that has been termed "sipping from a fire-hose" and may overwhelm a newbie.
Does a recommended diary look like nonsense to you? If it were it’s unlikely it would have made the list, but to check, click on the comments, and I can almost guarantee several people will have posted your same reservations. And you can gauge from their postings and links to references, and the refuting postings and links to references, whether the story is credible.
And here’s the scary part: Quite likely, it’s something being totally ignored (or back-paged) by the so-called main-stream media.
In short, view us like you would the letters to the editor, maybe tipping you off to things the public might want to see covered in your newspapers. I think most of us on DKOS are dedicated newspaper readers, so our interests may have merit.
SOMETIMES WE DO REPORT NEW NEWS
Maybe the best known news on DKOS was the Trent Lott affair, when he praised segregation--and almost got away with it. And that was not NEW news. That was reported news that we would not let slink away. (Good for us.)
But, if you stick around DKOS a while, you might be surprised how much NEW news does get reported.
(And maybe you, and your fellow reporters, can be the first to find "breaking" news here, and pass it on to the wires--my blatant motive for posting this blog.)
First, not a few political candidates, including some Presidential, have posted here, and replied on-line to our questions and comments.
And there was a well researched series on voting trends throughout the country, with numbers, charts and graphs, and better analysis than I have seen elsewhere.
When a major fire breaks out, you may see a diary here starting with something like "I’m looking out my window right now..." --and well before any of the TV networks interrupt their in-depth Michael Jackson coverage.
When Cheney got booed at a sports event, on TV the sound was turned off. But some of use where there.
And there was the time a lawmaker claimed the media was lying about conditions in Iraq, and "proved" it by posting a picture to his web site from his trip there, showing a peaceful Iraq street--until we pooled our linguistic and travel knowledge to identify the exact corner--in Turkey.
And sometimes I think the news is in the comments--as when people told about their poisoned pets, commenting to a diary listing news updates on the Chinese pet food scandal.
Admittedly some of our news you might not consider worthy, such as the guy who--in a panic, posted that Bill O’Reilly just threatened to have him arrested for mentioning Keith Olbermann during a radio show call in, and "Can he do that?" ("No" was our consensus. And he never did, although O’Reilly did have Fox Security call his house. I’m not making that up. Only in Bush America...)
And you might find less than exciting the occasional diaries that start out with something like "I was just diagnosed with cancer and my health insurance was cancelled. Is there anything I can do?" No. There’s nothing new there.
This is all just off the top of my head, and I’m sure others can come up with better examples. So I leave that to the comments.
BE NOT AFRAID
In conclusion, just let me say, Connie (and Joe), do not fear us--we people of the blog. We mean you no harm. We do not desire your jobs, nor your women. We come in peace, seeking only, truth, justice and the American way (especially truth)--and occasionally a recipe, or advice on how to fix a toilet, and not rarely, with a few choice words about the smirk-monkeys-in-charge who insult our intelligence while driving us into the ditch.
Yes, we are in some ways mysterious, with odd sigs and unfamiliar abbreviations, all inexplicably issuing forth from the internet tubes.
And yes, we DO rant a bit, and maybe call Bush "Chimpy McCokeSpoon," but truly we believe both God and the Constitution permits us that, and surely expressing our hard earned disrespect will neither harm the troops (who we support, BTW--despite what Fox says), nor kill Tinkerbell (I steal from Bill Maher).
We are a harmless lot--alas. And I can’t help but believe, you, we, and the nation, would be better off if we were less so.
P.S.
Speaking of the lack of a "reality clapper"--I am dumbfounded that the Democratic leadership can’t figure this out. Kerry, Durbin, and most recently Carter, continually parse, mince and dissect their words, apparently totally unaware that no matter WHAT they say, the right-wing clapper is going to bong them. They could recite the Lord’s Prayer and Fox would say you are hurting the troops--and the rest of the media will "report the controversy." Hey guys, since it doesn't matter, just tell the damn truth. Call a liar a liar. Call the worst President ever the worst President ever. Say it. Mean it. Repeat it. Defend it. And here’s an idea: Do like the GOP and support the media that supports you. Post links to progressive radio on your web sites. Go on their shows. Encourage your business friends who care about global warming to NOT use their advertiser dollars to support programs that call it a hoax. Stop with the Droopy the Dog, deer eyes in the headlights, demeanor. Get some cojones, guys. The future depends on it.