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Mr. Instapundit Goes To Washington

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds came to Washington yesterday to promote his new book at a National Press Club roundtable, and he gained a powerful plug from another blog revolutionary along the way.

Joe Trippi, who helped introduce the broader political world to the power of blogs during the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign of Howard Dean, wholeheartedly endorsed the thesis of Reynolds' book, "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths."

"I envy Glenn the title of the book," said Trippi, the author of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything."

He said people are misguided when they talk about the "information age" because technology is about more than distributing information; it is about "distributing power to the bottom." Trippi said the powerbrokers of the past face battlefields full of Davids, so the question they must ask themselves is, "Do you want to be Goliath, or do you want to be their slingshot?"

By way of example, he mentioned the market for music. The music industry acted like the all-powerful Goliath that it was by crushing perceived threats like the Napster file-sharing service, Trippi said. Apple Computer, on the other hand, decided to be the slingshot of music listeners by creating the now-popular iTunes service for distributing music online.

Like the music industry, Trippi said, "a bunch of companies are losing tons of profit" because they chose unwisely between being Goliath or the slingshot.

Reynolds said the same technological advances that have opened new economic doors -- what he called "worker control of the means of production without all that tedious communism stuff" -- also have given people a forum to speak their mind: the blogosphere.

"There are a lot of people who have things to say, and they have traditionally not been able to say them very much," he said. "And now they do."

Reynolds expect people to keep talking regardless of whether they are paid. He predicted that the bulk of the blogosphere will remain amateur even if some people make money at blogging, but that doesn't matter because blogging is "a reward all itself."

"We are hard-wired to share our opinions," he said. "We don't need to make money at it."

The foil at the roundtable was Barry Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of "End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation."

He acknowledged that corporate Goliaths exist and added, "I hope and pray that Joe and Glenn are right" about the Davids taking power from them. But he warned of "new oligopolies" that he instead sees controlling specialty markets for everything from razor blades and canned soups to medical devices and semiconductors.

"If there was a period where the consumer gained significantly, that's certainly not the case anymore," Lynn said.

In the question-and-answer session, one person asked Reynolds a question that he hears often: Why doesn't he allow reader comments at Instapundit?

Reynolds noted that his choice on that score actually is an "expensive" one because comments boost page views, and thus advertising revenue, as readers constantly visit pages to follow their favorite conversations. But he gave two reasons for not allowing comments: 1) Journalists too often erroneously attribute reader comments to blog authors; and 2) "It's pretty hard ... to maintain comments that are civil, interesting and good."

Panel moderator Nick Gillespie, the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, countered by explaining why his publication allows comments at the Hit & Run blog: "We kind of like our idiots."

At least two bloggers also attended the event. You can read their coverage at Age of Hooper (The) and Outside the Beltway.

UPDATE: Pat Cleary at ShopFloor heard Reynolds speak at a Cato Institute forum yesterday and has a full report.

Posted by | 11:01 AM

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In the meantime, the book is starting to generate a lot of buzz. Danny Glover at Beltway Blogroll has the lowdown on the NPC event here. [Read More]

Tracked on March 7, 2006 03:34 PM

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