[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
Watching Oakland A’s baseball on local affiliate KICU and coverage of a big fire 15 miles south of here on KKGO I’ve been very interested to observe a new broadcasting phenomena, actively inviting the audience to send in still imagery so the station can broadcast the best of it. KKGO even invited viewers to go to the station’s blog for fresh news, holy Mary in heaven what on earth is the world coming to when those geeks in pajamas with no standards or ethics change journalism right on the station site?
It only took six years, but these affiliates finally learned that some of the audience is thrilled to help publish for free, just for the fun’n the good of it, and in its own sometimes unpolished way (which viewers are happy to accept) the content is often better or equal to what could have been produced professionally. Welcome to the 21st century, KKGO & KICU, thank you very much for asking us in, it’s appreciated and respected.
Contempt and disgust are familiar reactions to a typically clumsy, stupid hit piece on Al Franken by New York Times "reporter" Monica Davey this morning, weaving in the real story of growing blog power by re-throwing all the dirt the opposition bloggers could find on Al Franken, with only passing reference to the burgeoning liberal Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, better known as the Mob.
The story is about bloggers, but the snot New York Times, so haughty in its legendary arrogance, stupidly refuses to link to the blogs directly as the source of the story! Good Lord no, linking to them might legitimize them, we might lose readers. For six years those pesky geeks in pajamas have consistently shown what utter chumps we are and stolen our readers, but if we write about their growing power—even on the internet—we won’t link them, they won’t observe how stupid and stubborn we are. Right?
Stupid is a carefully chosen word, earned when Davey cited "polling" with Coleman leading Franklin "within the margin of error" without stating what in fact the margin was. Without citing the poll, the actual numbers of the poll, any history of the poll, any relevance of that history to other polls in Minnesota, who in fact performed the poll, and of course no link to the poll, god damn it, no. Davey naturally got in the hit numbers on Franken like those liberal journalists always do, at least.
Davey thinks her readers are stupid, it’s that simple, precisely as her compadre Jodi Kantor demonstrated earlier in the week in a New York Times Obama hit piece that blithely stated "...in recent presidential elections, Jews have drifted somewhat to the right."
This is flat-out factually untrue, there is no evidence to support it whatsoever from a myriad of indicators (polling, registration, participation, donation) but not only did Kantor blow a huge cornerstone of her alleged story, again, she refused to link to any supporting element to it, these hack New York Times reporters are convinced their readers are as dumb as they are.
Hello? Y’all don’t get to spit out whatever crap you’re peddling as "journalism" and offend the intellect of Americans anymore. The longer the New York Times is so stupidly convinced arrogance is their guiding principle the longer their lousy journalists will continue to disgrace themselves and the more readers they’ll lose, the Mob roaring louder and more penetrating by the day.
The future path of bloggers relating to their many chump journalistic cousins is fairly clear, but how the growing power of citizen publication influences the 2008 presidential race is a little hazy at the moment. If—one day, in some glorious future epoch many millennia from now—Senator Obama actually secures the Democratic nomination, many blogs dedicated to his cause may find themselves surprisingly ignored.
Steve Soto has noted that for all the money raised and volumes so fervently written no official representatives of the Obama campaign ever show up to speak or organize at the Daily Kos. (None that we're aware of, anyway.) Plain fact of the matter is that Senator Obama thinks we’re off message, it’s not his message, and he wants to control all of it.
If the Republicans had not so spectacularly cratered in the last four years and then hoisted an ancient chump as their nominee I’d say Senator Obama would never get away with it, he’d need all the support and cash he could get to win. But Senator Obama now brings in around $40 million a month (!) through small donations from his campaign site, and is convinced being firmly at the helm of a campaign equals satisfactory control of the media agenda so hippies like me calling Republicans the sleazy crooks they are won’t get into "the dialogue" of our intellectually lofty American elections.
Obviously I don’t think Senator Obama can pull that off, I won’t shut up, the Mob won’t stay quiet, and the rest of the internets will continue to roil along in a growing roar. He thinks he can, though, and I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong, not in the least. As long as he wins.
[Update 0946 pst: Sam Graham Felsen, official Obama campaign blogger, posts here "more than occasionally." see comments ]