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Mother Jones And 'Politics 2.0'

The Mother Jones article I mentioned in a recent "Blog Bits" post was part of a larger package on "Politics 2.0" that is generating some heated discussion in the blogosphere.

You can read the reactions at The Bivings Report, Left In The West, PressThink, techPresident, and even in numerous posts at MoJoBlog (go here, here, here and here).

The negative reaction from bloggers is pretty consistent with my quote in the article "Meet The New Bosses": "I've been surprised at how thin-skinned bloggers can be. You compare that with how they treat the mainstream media and how they'll go after them and attack them, but when anything at all is said about the blogosphere, they go off half-cocked."

Unfortunately, nothing else I said in a lengthy conversation with reporter Daniel Schulman made it into print, including the fact that I disagreed with his very thesis -- that an elite group of mafia-type bosses in the liberal blogosphere controls lesser bloggers and intimidates traditional power brokers.

Many bloggers, including at least one quoted by Schulman, have challenged the would-be bosses of the left blogosphere. And while this blog is dedicated to the proposition that blogs have and are gaining power, I also have noted that they have only as much power as the establishment is willing to cede -- at least until Election Day, when influential bloggers can redirect the "power of the people" to a new establishment.

All of which is to say that there is no Boss Tweed of the blogosphere, and I don't think there ever will be.

As I told Schulman, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and his cronies may want great political power (despite their protestations to the contrary). They may even grab it one day and ultimately be corrupted by their absolute power. But the open, democratic nature of the online world will leave the door wide open for Kos 2.0 -- the Anti-Kos -- to fill the populist vacuum and become the thorn in the side of the new bosses.

Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum and techPresident made much the same point when talking to Schulman. "It's true that Josh Marshall and Markos Moulitsas are very influential, but they are constantly held accountable by their audience," Sifry said. "If Markos makes a mistake, right there in the blog comments people are bashing him. He can't stray that far from accountability, the way that editors of the old gatekeeping institutions ... were inherently insulated."

Ironically, Mother Jones actually offered the "Meet The New Bosses" assignment to me, but I declined because I've cut back on freelance work (too many obligations at my day job and my own side project, AirCongress). I'll just say that it would have been quite a different article if I had written it -- or it would have been killed because I disagreed with the pre-determined thesis.

The point Jay Rosen of PressThink made about the "writing and framing" of the article -- the tone, in other words -- is a legitimate criticism.

That said, once again bloggers are going off half-cocked against a mainstream publication that decided to take a critical and important look at the work they do. Schulman did a decent job with his story. He gave voice to numerous bloggers, even those who had different viewpoints. And the overall "Politics 2.0" package raises some issues that merit consideration by bloggers, politicians, new media experts and journalists.

The magazine also deserves praise (and has received some) for its outreach to bloggers upset by the coverage.

So lighten up, bloggers. Listen for a change, and if you still disagree with Schulman and everyone else at Mother Jones, fine. At least you will have listened and reached a rational conclusion rather than just jerking your knee one more time.

FOOTNOTE: More commentary on the Mother Jones series at The American Mind and The Moderate Voice.

Posted by Danny | 02:46 PM

Comments

Danny, thanks! We at Mother Jones are listening too, and as you can tell certainly aren't insulated from the response to the package. Your critique is fair, but I want you to know that Dan Schulman is too good a reporter to go into a piece with a predetermined conclusion--in fact, he was very skeptical of the concerns raised about, for instance, the Townhouse incident at first, but in his reporting found that this was a significant debate *within* the blogosphere, not just a critique lobbed at powerful bloggers by outsiders. I don't read his piece as concluding that the blogosphere is controlled by a cabal of mafia-like bosses--no one who follows the cacophony out there could come to that conclusion. But he did find that there are a few people who have developed some of the same advantages (and habits) that historically have been typical of powerful insiders.

Anyway, there are a lot of ways to look at this, and it's great that they're getting aired. Thanks for the good work you do over here.

Monika Bauerlein | 07.01.07 01:03 AM

Hi Danny:
Thanks weighing in and thanks again for taking the time to chat with me. You write that the premise of my story is that "an elite group of mafia-type bosses in the liberal blogosphere control lesser bloggers and intimidates traditional power brokers." If that was my thesis, I wasn't aware of it. What I set out to explore was the changing dynamic of the blogopshere as, increasingly, top tier bloggers are becoming part of the political, not to mention journalistic, establishment. This development poses an interesting irony, which you summed up succinctly in your New York Times' op-ed, "New on the Web: Politics as Usual," last December: "You might think that with the kind of rhetoric bloggers regularly muster against politicians, they would never work for them. But you would be wrong." As you noted, "Over the past few years, bloggers have won millions of fans by speaking truth to power — even the powers in their own parties — and presenting a fresh, outsider perspective.... But this year, candidates across the country found plenty of outsiders ready and willing to move inside their campaigns. Candidates hired some bloggers to blog and paid others consulting fees for Internet strategy advice or more traditional campaign tasks like opposition research." Interestingly, I think your article and others like it formed the inspiration for our own, which is why, I imagine, MoJo pitched you first on writing the story. (You suggest that had you written the article it might have been killed because your conclusions would not have fit the “pre-determined thesis,” a notion that is not only false but a bit offensive, too.)

I agree with you that the blogosphere has no Boss Tweed per se, but I think it goes without saying that the liberal blogosphere has de facto leaders, influentials, who by dint of endorsing a particular candidate, cause, or opinion can influence significant numbers of people to do the same. (The Daily Kos, for example, directed $1.5 million to select Democratic candidates during the mid-terms.) This is why politicians have begun courting A-list bloggers -- holding private audiences with them, inviting them over for home-cooked meals, and hosting events and parties (as Mark Warner did last summer, in lavish style, at the Stratosphere in Vegas, where the Yearly Kos convention was held) in the hopes of securing a coveted endorsement. (Whether these tactics are effective is another story.) As select bloggers gain in prominence and, increasingly, swim in the same ponds as traditional Washington powerbrokers, it raises an important question, which blogger Maryscott O'Connor asked when we spoke: Will they stay true to the ideals that propelled them to prominence (and in some cases lucrative campaign consulting work) in the first place? Will they change the game from the inside, or will it change them? As the headline of your Times op-ed points out, already there is evidence of "politics as usual" in the blogosphere, which is why I’m not sure why you suggest that your take on what’s going on is so different from my own.

On your point that the "open, democratic nature of the online world will leave the door wide open for Kos 2.0 -- the Anti-Kos -- to fill the populist vacuum and become the thorn in the side of the new bosses," I'm in complete agreement. This is something I wish I had made clearer in my piece, though I thought Mathew Gross, who's now consulting for John Edwards, got at this when he said, "in 20 years someone's going to come along and lop off all our heads." But I think you and Micah Sifry have it pretty much right. As Sifry notes, "If Markos makes a mistake, right there in the blog comments people are bashing him. He can't stray that far from accountability." True, but bloggers like Kos also have devotees -- his call themselves Kossacks -- who are inclined to follow their leads, sometimes unquestioningly. Witness last summer's Townhouse flap, when an outraged Kos lashed out at The New Republic and posted Jason Zengerle's email address, subtly directing his troops to bombard the reporter with hate mail. (They heeded the call, in great numbers.) As you know, bloggers often chafe when either they or the medium itself come under scrutiny, so perhaps they are not always the best to hold themselves accountable. And yet sometimes they are. To an extent, there is already a bit of a backlash against the "big boys" of blogging emanating from the blogosphere's lower castes (if you’ll pardon the expression). As one blogger wrote in February, "They're the blogospheric equivalent of the Washington pundits who think they're better than bloggers because they get invited to the right parties and of the Democrats who hold fundraisers where they take money from corporations. We hold bake sales and support our candidates twenty-five bucks at a time. What's hilarious is that most of these guys come out of the 2004 Howard Dean campaign, only a taste of success has made them forget all about people-powered."

Anyway, I thank you again for your thoughtful piece. I’m glad our politics package has jumpstarted something of a debate, and, as you can tell, we’re trying our best to engage with our critics in what I guess you could call the journalism 2.0 fashion. As a regular reader of your blog, I hope you’ll continue to keep up your excellent coverage of this very important beat.

Best,
Daniel Schulman
Associate Editor, Mother Jones

Daniel Schulman | 07.01.07 11:39 AM

Hi Daniel,

You're welcome. I enjoyed talking with you about the topic and following up with more information via e-mail. I thought the piece (and the whole package) raised points that need to be discussed, and I wasn't anywhere near as disturbed by it as your most vocal critics -- some of whom seem incapable of taking to heart any criticisms about the Almighty Blogosphere.

I was a bit surprised that after our lengthy telephone conversation, however, that the only useful insights you took from me were that bloggers were mean to me because I wrote something critical of them. I gathered from an e-mail I received from the fact-checker before the story appeared that indeed you were only using that one comment from me. I told her that I never would have granted an interview had I known that's all you wanted from me. She said she would express that concern to you and her editor.

I don't begrudge you the judgment to use what you found most useful from our interview. But considering the tone of your piece, I was surprised that you ignored my point about Kos not being a leader of a new establishment -- or, as the title of your piece says, a "boss." You asked me specifically about him and other A-list bloggers, and I disagreed with your thinking on that point. You pressed me about it further when I disagreed, and I still disagreed. As an editor, I think putting that context from our conversation into your piece would have improved it and perhaps appeased your critics (then again perhaps not because of the knee-jerk phenomenon among too many bloggers -- and journalists).

When I said the premise of your story was that "an elite group of mafia-type bosses in the liberal blogosphere control lesser bloggers and intimidates traditional power brokers," I obviously was stating my opinion after having read it -- and after having heard about the assignment as envisioned by your editor, Clara Jeffery. You may have intended a different premise, but that one came across to me and to others. Some of that may be no fault of your own -- I know I didn't write the "New On The Web: Politics As Usual" headline or create the graphic for my NYT piece, the two things that seemed to set off bloggers the most -- but the perception is there nonetheless.

One last point: I apologize for offending you with my comment about the potential for a "killed" article. Magazines do kill articles they assign but end up not liking and even promise kill fees to cover that possibility, but I certainly don't know Mother Jones' policies or practices on that front. I was just thinking philosophically out loud.

Danny

Danny Glover | 07.01.07 09:30 PM

Hi Monika,

I agree that Daniel is a good reporter, but just to clarify: I didn't say he reached a pre-determined conclusion; I said the assignment had a "pre-determined thesis." I know that to be true because the assignment was pitched to me.

Clara Jeffery also described the assignment as a "reported essay," so there certainly was room to take it in different directions. Daniel did a fine job of reporting; I'm just saying I would have reported it differently. I also think, based on my interview with Daniel, that he was less skeptical of the thesis than I would have been, but that's just my opinion.

Of course, bloggers probably would have reacted just as hostilely to anything I wrote because that's what they do.

Danny

Danny Glover | 07.01.07 09:51 PM

Hey Danny, Clara Jeffery chiming in here, since I was the one who got in touch with you. Your great reporting—here and in the NYT—on some political bloggers/netrooters who took money and consulting contracts from various campaigns and didn't disclose that well, or at all, to their readers is one of the reasons we decided to look at the broader issue of blogger power/conflicts of interest (and render that for a readership that is not familiar to these debates). So of course we were interested in having you explore that further.

But we don't operate with pre-determined theses. Hard to be a reporting magazine if you do. Dan Shulman's reporting led him where it did, your reporting would have perhaps led you in different directions. But when I talk to a writer, I do say: hey I'm thinking of a piece that builds on your work (in this case: on conflicts of interest) looks at related issues and would you be interested in writing something along those lines and what would it be...?

That's a normal overture to how pieces get assigned. Sometimes I have an idea of what a piece *might* be and then the writer I'm talking to about it totally changes my mind, sometimes they approach me with an idea and I say "what if we also/instead did this?" and they get excited by that line of thinking (or some hybrid) and that is what they start reporting on. And then no matter what you think the story might be, once you get into it, it can wind up a very different beast.

And that's the pretty normal editorial give and take.

We didn't get to any but an initial exchange because you said though the topic intrigued you— despite still smarting from the blogger response to your NYT piece on conflicts of interest—you were just way too busy with NJ, BBR, and AirCongress (which is seriously cool).

So anyway, to your readers who aren't familiar with how editors and writers work together, that's a primer. Every story and every relationship works a bit differently.

Of course, I'm still a big fan of your work, so if your schedule ever lightens up and there's a topic you'd like to explore, by all means I'd love to have you appear in the pages/urls of MoJo.

Best, Clara

Clara Jeffery | 07.02.07 04:42 PM

Comment for Danny at PressThink.

Tim | 07.02.07 05:08 PM

Hi Clara,

Your description of the editorial process squares with my own as an editor/reporter. I regularly assign stories to my staff, and I like the fact that they don't always get written exactly as I envisioned them. It makes my job more enjoyable because I get to learn things I didn't know and read stories full of insights that hadn't occurred to me.

My main gripe about Daniel's story is that he didn't include my point that precisely because the Internet is such an open forum, we needn't worry about new "gatekeepers" or "bosses" in the blogosphere. As soon as they cross ethical lines, become corrupted by power, etc., they can be (and I believe will be) challenged by smart people who now have easy, inexpensive and broad access to the virtual printing press. The same goes for bloggers who might gain power in journalism. It's not just that my view on that aspect was excluded, either. I think that voice was absent from the piece (or was downplayed), whether from me or anyone else.

I gather from the commentary that has ensued here, at Mother Jones and PressThink, and at other forums over the past few days that no one really disagrees with that point. So really, this all gets back to the "writing and framing" issue that Jay Rosen raised at the outset.

I don't necessarily have a problem with your "Meet the New Bosses" headline (or with Jay's Huffington Post headline about "Printing Press Progressives") because headlines, kickers and the like are supposed to draw people into a story. I don't see any good reason to abandon that principle of Journalism 101 as the media world transforms. But had other things been handled a bit differently, there might not have been as much criticism of your package.

Then again, without the criticism, this debate might not have ensued, and we wouldn't have had all this fun. :)))

Danny Glover | 07.02.07 05:48 PM

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