Blog Wars [Kurtz mentions Free Republic]

Washington Post ^ | June 21, 2005 | Howard Kurtz

[Quilla]

Every day, it seems, there are more blogs, more compilations of blogs and more chatter about blogs, as online debate comes in more flavors.

You have congressmen, presidential candidates and corporate leaders all doing the blog thing, as well as legions of ordinary folks armed mainly with opinions. This, in my view, is a great thing, even though no human being, including me, can keep up with the millions of words being posted each day. (Now you have to keep up not just with Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo but with his TPM Cafe, not to mention the 1,239 people posting at Huffington).

But the debate on the most popular political blogs often seems to reflect the old right-left warfare -- just search on "Downing Street Memo" if you doubt me -- in ways that too often seem utterly predictable.

Snip:

"Of the twenty-four liberal blogs in the top quintile, Dailykos, TPM Café, Smirking Chimp, Metafilter, BooMan Tribune, MyDD, and Dembloggers are full-fledged community sites where members cannot only comment, but they can also post diaries / articles / polls. By comparison, there are no community sites among the top twenty-four conservative blogs. None, zip, zero, nada. This is particularly stunning when one considers the importance of the Free Republic community to the conservative netroots. While it would appear that there are hordes of Glenn Reynolds wannabe's among conservatives in the netroots, Redstate.org sticks out as the only success story for a community oriented blog within the conservative blogosphere. In fact, of the five most trafficked conservative blogs (over 200,000 page views per week), only one, Little Green Footballs, even allows comments, much less the ability to actually write a diary or a new article."

[Quilla]

Thought y'all might find this interesting. I'm amazed though that many don't understand the difference between a blog and and a forum.

[Rodney King]

I'm not sure what his point is. What is so stunning about it? Is he saying that The top Dem sites are all communities, but most of the top conservative sites are straight blogs? And this is stunning because FR is so important? OK. I just don't see what is stunning. There is a difference between the way the right and the left use the internet. Here are some possible explanations:

1. FR is such a good community, there is no need for any other to rival it.

2. Republicans have lives. We don't just hole up in our apartments with 10 cats and freak out about conspiracy theories. Therefore, we only need one "community" whereas the loser Dems are on the web precisely because they crave community since society has rejected them as the losers they are.

[pabianice]

"Of the twenty-four liberal blogs in the top quintile, Dailykos, TPM Café, Smirking Chimp, Metafilter, BooMan Tribune, MyDD, and Dembloggers are full-fledged community sites where members cannot only comment, but they can also post diaries / articles / polls. By comparison, there are no community sites among the top twenty-four conservative blogs. None, zip, zero, nada. This is particularly stunning when one considers the importance of the Free Republic community to the conservative netroots.

Really? That's news to us. Just another Leftist Liar...

[Quilla]

Incidentally, the quote in the above excerpt is from liberal blogger Chris Bowers of MyDD.

[Always Right]

1. FR is such a good community, there is no need for any other to rival it.

Why blog when you can Freep!

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

There are other good conservative forums such as lucianne.com.

[narby]

There are Bloggers, and then there are Freepers.

That'd make a good tagline....

[Cat loving Texan]

"Of the twenty-four liberal blogs in the top quintile, Dailykos, TPM Café, Smirking Chimp, Metafilter, BooMan Tribune, MyDD, and Dembloggers are full-fledged community sites where members cannot only comment, but they can also post diaries

Conservatives don't post diaries. Those who have lives don't have time.

[Rodney King]

There are other good conservative forums such as lucianne.com.

Lucianne.com blows.

[JohnnyZ]

Why blog when you can Freep!

Because I don't think JimRob would appreciate reading Hungry Dragon's Guide to Asian Food in Charlotte on FR.

[Tacis]

While I deny that I have turned anti-American scumbag crapweasel, I do admit that I watched some CNN the other afternoon. There was a segment that appeared to be a regular involving two fairly civil (yeah, I know, but they were) females, each with a lap top screen in front of her, and they were examining what a number of differnent blogs said about a given subject.

It was interesting and fairly well done. They mentioned some blogs I've not read and, for the most part, described the blogs pretty well, e.g., "the conservative blog ...," "the liberal blog...," and so on. They did not catagorize the Kos blog (extremist left wing, anti-American, neocommunist, destry America and capitalism, I believe), but I may not have caught the first mention of it.

If media only slightly left of center (like Fox, for example) haven't got something like this in the works, they sure ought to.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

No, du, smirking chimp, etc. blow, lucianne is pretty good, although not as extensive or diverse as free republic.

[Dr. Free Market]

I likewise am not sure what his point is, but the difference seems rather obvious:

Liberals prefer to insulate themselves, whereas conservatives prefer open discourse.

[prognostigaator]

slow bump

[Ann Archy]

Diaries??? They post their DIARIES??? Yuk!

Articles??? The Dems are allowed to post ARTICLES...FULL Articles....and we are not???

Jim, Can the Dem sites post full articles from newspapers and we can't??

[finnman69]

I think it is the main point.

Places like Kos serve to create a centralized depository of rants, 'insights', diaries, and in general create a cyber community. It is insular and about giving voice to the individual.

Contrasting this are my favorite blogs/forums such as FR, Instapundit, Polipundit, Powerline, LGF.

The 'conservative/right' sites serve as information nexus points. Informating switching stations that reference and cross reference while posting additional information. It's all about the passing of information and linking. Commentary is usually the last concern with the exception at a forum like FR where commentary is a primary part of the postings.

to summarize:

left=community rah rah
right=information transfer

[jpl]

Just a couple of weeks ago I was having to explain to my mother the difference between a blog, a bulletin board, and a plain old web page. Bad media information had her thinking that pretty much every page on the world wide web was a "blog".

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[CzarChasm]

FR is such a good community, there is no need for any other to rival it.

Absolutely right.

_{[pun intended, of course!]}