It’s beyond dispute that the blogosphere played a role in the 2004 elections. How big a role can be disputed, but that doesn’t matter. The new medium has made its mark, and politics will never be the same.
The Foleygate fiasco is the most recent example of the blogosphere’s ability to keep stories front and center. It was a new media-fueled story, and the swiftness with which Mark Foley resigned makes me wonder what Watergate would have been like if blogs had been around.
Former president Bill Clinton admitted that mainstream media (MSM) have been Democrats’ allies — something conservatives have known for years — and that Democrats are naive about new media. Watergate gets a mention:
“We’re all that way, and I think a part of it is we grew up in the ’60s and the press led us against the war and the press led us on civil rights and the press led us on Watergate. Those of us of a certain age grew up with this almost unrealistic set of expectations,” he told the Washington Post.
An anti-Nixon press uncovered a scandal that reached the highest levels of the government and ever since, MSM’s tone has been blatantly anti-Republican and anti-conservative.
Clinton acknowledged that conservatives have benefited the most in the new online media world because we’ve long believed MSM were biased against us, and we’ve had to carve out our own media outlets. I’m convinced it will always be that way, but I’m glad to know some MSM types are accepting the new medium. At last week’s Online News Association (ONA) conference, Washington Post editor Len Downie’s remarks signified a change in tone, from possessive envy to innovative embrace. From Editor & Publisher:
Reporters love newsroom blogs, said Downie, because they put writers in better touch with their readers: “Everyone in our newsroom wants to be a blogger.”
And the blogs that pick apart every article that the Post produces are a good thing, said Downie, because they “keep the paper honest” and, even if their commentary isn’t positive, bring people to the site.
“Blogs are not competitors and not problems,” he said. “Instead we have a very interesting symbiotic relationship. Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge.”
While it’s true that competition for print media has increased tremendously due to the Web, the Washington Post’s overall audience has now become huge compared to what it once was, Downie added. And instead of weakening the paper’s brand, as he said it was feared, it has strengthened it and made the Washington Post well known around the world.
Kevin Maney is an example of a once-hostile-to-blogging journalist who now has a blog of his own, as do other once-snarky MSM types.
Journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis (and here and here) said this year’s ONA conference was an improvement over last year’s, where he heard “a lot of resistance to change and blogs.” Jeff frequently blogs about the convergence of new and old media and old media’s resistance to it.
The Watergate era had to be an exciting time for journalists, and I’m sure some old-school types resisted Bob Woodard and Carl Bernstein’s investigative tactics. But from that time on, journalism became a tool for uncovering and exposing corruption. How different would the Watergate scandal have been if blogs had been around? With thousands of pajama reporters doing their own investigations on their own time for free, I believe the cover-up would have been uncovered much sooner. In fact, I’ll bet there’s more to the scandal than what’s been revealed so far. Leave it up to a blogger to leave no stone unturned and no nit unpicked.
Blogging will always be an outlet for the online diarist and hobbyist, a marketing tool for the business owner, and a forum for the citizen journalist who dares to go where no MSM journalist has gone before. But the potential of blogs is still unknown. And that’s exciting.
Related posts:
Update: Patterico links to a rant by yet another journalist.
