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December 10, 2005BELTWAY BLOGROLL
Who Has Mastered The Power Of The Blog?
That was the question on the minds of liberal bloggers yesterday after Editor & Publisher previewed a story set to appear in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
According to the journalism trade publication, the magazine piece will argue that conservatives have an advantage over liberals when it comes to using blogs in the political arena. Michael Crowley, a writer for the liberal New Republic, wrote the Times piece. It includes the insights of Matt Stoller, who recently finished a blogging stint for the successful gubernatorial campaign of U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.
Yesterday, two of the most popular liberal blogs, Daily Kos and Eschaton, posted a combined three entries in response to the Editor & Publisher summary of the Times article.
Armando offered this thought at Daily Kos: "[I]f you define effective as being a part of the Mighty Wurlitzer, having no respect for the facts and shilling for the Republican Party, Crowley is 100 percent correct. ... I am proud to say we will never be 'effective' in the way the right blogs are."
And Markos Moulitsas Zuniga added in the same entry: "Instead of getting riled up about [it], we'll keep doing what we're doing. And at the end of 2006 we'll be able to take stock of the situation and declare, definitively, that the conservative blogosphere is merely a redundant extension of their noise machine."
The response also prompted Stoller to comment at MyDD. "When talking to Crowley," Stoller wrote, "what I didn't make clear enough is that the right framework is not right versus left on the blogs but the whole conservative message machine as a whole versus the left-wing blogs. ... While right-wing blogs currently drive message on a local level, they really aren't powerful in and of themselves. Liberal blogs, by contrast, are new infrastructure, but we haven't figured out how to make that new infrastructure useful to electoral politics yet."
The summary of Crowley's article also is sparking comment on the right. At Professor Bainbridge, for instance, Stephen Bainbridge challenges Crowley's conclusion that the right only uses the Web to push their issues and candidates while the left often criticizes its leaders.
"Where was Crowley when the right side of the blogosphere erupted into civil war over [Supreme Court nominee] Harriet Miers?" Bainbridge wrote. "Or the torture debate? Or Terri Schiavo? Or the ongoing fights between libertarian and social conservative bloggers? Where was he when we took on [former Senate Majority Leader]Trent Lott? Or [President] Bush over [the response to Hurricane] Katrina? Sheesh."
More blogosphere analyses are sure to come once the full Times piece is published tomorrow.
Posted by | 11:38 AM
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