Update II (12/20): Some truth, much exaggeration…and a bit of blog envy? More on media bashing.
Update (12/19): Fellow Examiner Blog Board of Contributors blogger Dan Gillmor on “Citizen media is shifting power back to the people.”
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AND YOU, TOO, bloggers, blog readers, Wikipedians, YouTube-ers, and everyone else who contributes to and consumes a growing pile of information — user-generated content — on the web. 
It’s a gimmick, but I’ll bite.
Every year TIME magazine chooses a “Person of the Year” and highlights whatever “good works” he/she has done. In 2004, TIME did something radical when it chose Power Line as “Blog of the Year” after bloggers, led by Power Line poked holes in CBS’s flimsy story about George Bush’s National Guard service. Rathergate, in my opinion, still is the most significant moment in blogosphere history as we watched the veneer of mainstream media’s “objectivity” crack and crumble to the ground.
To its credit, CBS posted my review of An Army of Davids, with criticism against the network intact. (Also see The Blogging Panel was…, and the Rathergate and Easongate categories)
Two years later, TIME has gone a step farther. I am “Person of the Year” because of this blog and my all-consuming focus on developing it, promoting it and my work, and collaborating with you the reader to make an impact on the world and influence people. You are “Person of the Year” because you go online to read it and e-mail links to other people. You the reader and/or commenter and/or blogger — each of us is Person of the Year because of the parts we play in a bold new mission.
To call the web, and blogging in particular, revolutionary is not an overstatement. Never before have individuals had such power to disseminate news and opinion. Finding news and reporting or commented on it is one thing, but without the means to get it out to the masses, it was like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it.
The world wide web and the self-publishing tools it spawned have empowered individuals in ways similar to the Protestant Reformation. Cheap (relatively speaking) computers and broadband Internet capabilities have leveled the playing field of amateurs and professionals considerably. Traditional media companies still are powerful, but we saw that power erode over the last few years, thanks to ordinary people like you and me.
Journalists read blogs. They may not admit it, but they do. They pay attention. They use blogs as sources without citing them. Journalists who used to hate blogs are now blogging.
I am biased because I’m a blogger, but the revolution is not limited to blogs. For example, what’s happening with YouTube is astounding. What began as a site for regular folks to upload silly home videos has become a place to generate word-of-mouth advertising, job hunt, promote your band, your work, yourself. Television networks and film makers upload previews for user feedback. People upload banned videos and other “controversial” clips. Yes, there are copyright issues, but uploading is unstoppable, and big media are finally realizing that YouTube actually can help them. (See YouTube on Wikipedia)
The information reformation has flourished in part because government has kept out of the way. From the TIME cover story:
Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.
The current level of productivity and innovation on the web is possible because of government non-interference. The web has evolved and grown because it isn’t regulated. In a pure libertarian sense, the government’s job is to simply “preserve the rules of the game by enforcing contracts, preventing coercion, and keeping markets free,” not control or reign in the development of businesses and ideas. People are allowed to stretch the boundaries of their abilities and energy and create and share content (text, images, music) and “open source” software that other like-minded individuals can add to and improve on. WordPress, the program that runs this blog, is one such program.
(Will government remain out of the way? With politicians threatening to write laws that place burdens and retraints on blogs and other social media that may curtail freedom of speech and “net neutrality,” the government is itching to control the web, which will stifle innovation and growth, just as it has in other industries.)
I called the TIME story a gimmick because we bloggers have known for years that what we have the power to do is the real news. Echoing the sentiments of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, media blogger Jeff Jarvis says that “person of the year” stories are relics from the “mass era” anyway.
The era of “hits” was a product of market scarcity. Because it costs money to store records and CDs and broadcast TV shows, sellers allowed only the most profitable to occupy shelves and airwaves. But the web has ushered in the niche-market era. The mass market still exists, but it no longer dominates the way it used to.
Supply is no longer limited to what sellers can afford to store or display or what manufacturers can afford to make and deliver. A medium like blogs, for instance, and commerce sites like
Your picture belongs there, mine does not yet belong there. But I’m working on it, La Shawn, inspired by you, Kitty Litter, Lifelike Pundits, The Anchoress, Sisu and Laura Lee Donoho’s Wide Awake Cafe, among many others.
Comment by Gayle Miller — 12.18.06 @ 11:49 am
Gayle, your picture belongs there, too. You’re a blogger and a blog reader and commenter. Comments are considered user-generated content, too. And many of my commenters, including yourself, are thoughtful and intelligent.
Comment by La Shawn — 12.18.06 @ 11:57 am
This is interesting timing because I was going to do a post on how we are our own editors now–we no longer need the MSM to frame stuff for us.
One thing I love about the online world is that we can write and put ourselves out there without having to wait for approval from the MSM–even if we have a few readers, we can still hook up with other like-minded people and grow intellectually and creatively. The Internet has really helped me express myself and have some type of audience before and/or while I get my “other” audience[s].
Comment by mj — 12.18.06 @ 12:25 pm
It’s a gimmick all right, but I won’t bite.
Comment by Mwalimu Daudi — 12.18.06 @ 2:20 pm
Well, at least your picture’s on an Mac screen.
Comment by Larry — 12.18.06 @ 2:33 pm
To be honest, I am ambivalent to the “information reformation” despite the fact that I blog.
Yes, there is much more diversity in opinion. Yes, it hands the ability to mass communicate to just your average Joe. Yes, blogging can also pierce through some of the carefully orchestrated lies of the mainstream media.
All these positives are evidence that the monopoly of the MSM is loosening, and it is more difficult to concoct journalistic theatricals and present them as fact.
Or is it?
Along with this new diversified media comes a Greek chorus of the nonsensical and the blatantly false, standing to the side, fully dressed in their black garbs and wailing. Blogs and other online publishing platforms have so increased in number and scope that without a discerning eye or an extensive background in history or political science, a common passer-by surfing the wild seas of the net will have a lot of difficulty in deciphering what’s excrement and what’s not.
I think Peggy Noonan expressed this sentiment best in her Wall Street Journal Op-ed, “Media Anarchy Has Its Downside: We got freedom but lost standards”. Here’s the link if you want to read it. (http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110009009)
I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me excitedly telling me their newest discovery on the web. The conversation usually runs like this:
“Hey, man. I read somethin’ scandalous on the Internet yesterday.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“D’you know that the British crown still owns America? The reason why we get taxed so much is because we’re paying off the British crown! The United States is really still just another colony of the Brits!”
“Uh… Sir, where did you read this?”
“Off the net.”
“Oh.”
While blogging and online publishing can be very influential and serves the good of the public, the flip side of that coin is that this same medium can be the greatest promulgator of outright falsehoods and half-baked ideas. As Miss Noonan pointed out, there are no standards to veracity or integrity.
I think, what many discerning blog surfer would end up with is a list of a select few blogs managed by individuals (or groups) to whom they could give their trust. The rest would be relegated to curiosities and, for lack of a better word, digital fodder.
I don’t know if all of these unknowns warrant a place in this year’s “Person of the Year”. Even as I participate in this new medium, I am also trying to remain watchful at where all this is leading us.
Undiscovered countries, no doubt…
Comment by Thomas — 12.18.06 @ 4:15 pm
“You like me! You really like me!”
Comment by RedBeard — 12.18.06 @ 4:56 pm
Actually, I was in favor of LaShawn for Person of the Year, even before Time once again resorted to the cowardly ploy of thinking up a generic person so it wouldn’t have to name a specific one.
Comment by Dave — 12.18.06 @ 5:18 pm
I’m with you there, Dave, about La Shawn.
But perhaps it’s more a matter of TIME having an intellectual void. It hasn’t been relevant for decades, and this “You” nonsense only serves to help nail the coffin lid tighter.
Comment by RedBeard — 12.18.06 @ 5:36 pm
Hi La Shawn
I am in Austin TX for family Christmas.
I believe Leftists at Time Magazine were beside themselves when they asked “Who was the most imfluential person of 2006?”
The answerer is so obvious it cost the Republicans the election - Iraq.
And who are the major players, either of whom would influence what happens in IraQ the most?
1 George W Bush, who’s policies have lead to teh present situation, and who can change directions for better or worse.
2 Nouri Al Makiki, Iraqui PM. He can change the direction of the war by bravely ordering the crushing of the Shiite and Suni militias, perhaps at his own expense - because he would irritate his powrer base for “doing the right thing”.
Because Al Malaki is a Bush supporter, he (and Bush) are off limits for Time.
Comment by Frank Zavisca, MD — 12.18.06 @ 5:44 pm
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish Ms. LaShawn Barber Person of the Year a Very Merry Christmas and a prosperous and Happy New Year. I love your blog. I’ve learned a lot since I started following you, Lashawn, even though I live in the wild west of Kansas.
Comment by dianne — 12.18.06 @ 6:04 pm
Thank you, thank you… Seriously, thank YOU, I would never have received this award had it not been for the support of YOU, the ‘little people’… I want to share this award will all of you but it’s just not big enough, so, again, THANK YOU!!!
Comment by TexasFred — 12.18.06 @ 7:51 pm
i don’t know about y’all, but i’m pretty excited about this great honor accorded me.
nothing perks up a resume like an entry for “time magazine person of the year”, right?
offers should be rolling in anytime now, i reckon.
Comment by ed — 12.18.06 @ 8:17 pm
A blogger doesn’t have to be politically oriented or newsworthy, so there are no correct facts necessary. There are blogs I read that have nothing to do with that–they’re just enjoyable to read. We no longer have to wait for a newspaper to put out their list of approved columnists writing about their dogs or whatever–we can read great stuff online now. There’s a newspaper column that I’d love to write/help write, but I can’t go to the current writer and demand words be handed over to me. So in the meantime, I’ll write stuff online until that day comes.
Comment by mj — 12.18.06 @ 8:38 pm
Daniel Drezner sees the germ of an idea in TIME’s pick but hates the magazine’s execution. La Shawn Barber appreciates the empowerment of the individual and praises government inaction for it. Both understand something important culturally is taking place. TIME failed to pick a person (they could have gone for the YouTube founders), but they’ve pushed a culture-altering phenomenon into the public discussion.
Pingback by The American Mind — 12.19.06 @ 1:40 am
Time Magazine p.c.ed on this one (sorry, not a grammarian). It should go to one of these ghastly leaders like Kim Il Jung or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I noticed a headline article where Pat Buchanan says the same thing. I didn’t read it though.
It’s funny how I agree with him on this and the immigration issue. A former Nixon guy and he appears to be spot on when it comes to some important national issues.
John
Comment by John — 12.19.06 @ 1:52 pm
Hello, I’m back!
This is the first day my blog is functional. Beginning in the morning some time last Friday, my server was hit with a Denial of Service cyber attack. This is what my web host had to say when I tried to find out just what in tar-nation is going on:
Bo…
Trackback by The Thomas Chronicles — 12.19.06 @ 2:58 pm
Hi LaShawn,
This is my first comment although I have been a reader for a time. I just wanted to note that as the proud owner of a blog, I feel pretty good about Time’s dedication. However, George will is not impressed and makes an arse of himself as he scoffs the idea as unthinkable. Perhaps he would like more recognition for his integrity-shy, journalism.
Best,
Hakim Abdullah
Comment by Hakim — 12.19.06 @ 6:35 pm
Congratulations-keep up the good work.
Comment by Matthew Humphries — 12.20.06 @ 8:46 am
Love your foto LaShawn, I think it should be up in your masthead!
Hope you had a Merry Christmas, and have a Happy New Year. (2 weeks w/o internet but with a new job, and 4 kids before Christmas has left me busy.)
Reputation becomes more important, and yours is very high in my book! Keep it up please.
Comment by Tom Grey - Liberty Dad — 12.27.06 @ 4:32 am