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Atlas Mugged: How a Gang of Scrappy, Individual Bloggers Broke the Stranglehold of the MSM
The Atlas Society ^ | Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.

Posted on 09/23/2007 8:05:31 AM PDT by shove_it

The twentieth century was the high point of mass culture—or “the overculture” as some call it. Any culture that could produce Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and The Honeymooners can’t be all bad.

But eventually, the connection between media elites and their audiences began to fracture. Though apocryphal, the line frequently attributed to Pauline Kael of the New Yorker in 1972 sums up the growing chasm between the overculture—particularly the media—and its audience: “I don’t know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him.”

Just as the Big Three car manufacturers, with a once-monolithic hold on American consumers, seemed unaware that the public wanted a wider choice of cars (until Japan listened and responded), Pauline Kael’s in-crowd of coastal elites has, if anything, become even more clueless and resistant to emerging changes in the culture and dissemination of information.

How clueless? In 2004, Jonathan Klein, the former executive vice president of CBS News, described blogging as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.” Last May, Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons was quoted as saying, “The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.” ...

(Excerpt) Read more at atlassociety.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: msm; newmedia; pajamahadeen
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1 posted on 09/23/2007 8:05:33 AM PDT by shove_it
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To: shove_it

....well, the MSM could OFFER A BETTER PRODUCT. But that wouldn’t get their unbiased, non partisan agenda out.....


2 posted on 09/23/2007 8:10:37 AM PDT by Tzimisce (How Would Mohammed Vote? Hillary for President! www.dndorks.com)
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To: shove_it
The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war.

Stupid comparison. The Sioux may have won the battle, but they LOST THE WAR!

3 posted on 09/23/2007 8:20:55 AM PDT by neodad (USS Vincennes (CG-49) Freedom's Fortress)
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To: shove_it
Last May, Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons was quoted as saying, “The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war.

Parsons ought to remember that although the Sioux Nation defeated Custer, it eventually lost the Black Hills War.

4 posted on 09/23/2007 8:27:48 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: shove_it
Interesting view of the Blogging world and its History.

The idea that anyones opinion is as good as the so called “Journalists” is ground breaking from a publishing aspect.

I have blogged for years and occasionally submit pieces for publication on other sites.

If anyone had told me when I started that I would have a site with tens of thousands of visitors, have a piece that was read by over a quarter million people and was a featured piece on the Rush Limbaugh show I would have told them they were nuts.

I am still amazed.

Cheers,

knewshound

http://www.knewshound.blogspot.com/

5 posted on 09/23/2007 8:34:27 AM PDT by knews_hound (In order to not be banned, I no longer discuss Politics here.)
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To: neodad
Does this mean that in the future Pinch Salzburg’s descendants could end up running a casino and selling cheap smokes?
6 posted on 09/23/2007 8:34:35 AM PDT by InABunkerUnderSF ("Gun Control" is not about the guns. "Illegal Immigration" is not about the immigration)
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To: shove_it

Could we please stop pretending that Citizen Kane is one of the world’s Great Works of Art?


7 posted on 09/23/2007 8:37:49 AM PDT by Psycho_Bunny
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To: Tzimisce

The weakness of MSM coverage versus what people get here on FreeRepublic, is that the “professional” journalist knows very little about that he’s currently assigned to report on, while here on FR we get people chiming in on discussions who have expert professional knowledge of the particular issue


8 posted on 09/23/2007 8:38:44 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor (When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty)
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To: shove_it
"The zenith had been reached!"

The FCC -- FDR's lever that moved the world.

9 posted on 09/23/2007 8:44:03 AM PDT by bvw
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To: SauronOfMordor
I look back on the journalism students I knew in college and you would be hard-pressed to find another group of students less interested in acquiring knowledge.
10 posted on 09/23/2007 8:45:48 AM PDT by Reily
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To: knews_hound

I don’t guess your letter to the Bee got published.


11 posted on 09/23/2007 8:46:09 AM PDT by shove_it (old Old Guardsman)
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To: shove_it

Bump for an article worth reading.


12 posted on 09/23/2007 8:49:30 AM PDT by Poser (Willing to fight for oil)
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To: shove_it

LOL

No, it didn’t.

I was shocked, shocked I tell you!

I don’t think they quite got my humor for some reason.....

Cheers,

knewshound

http://www.knewshound.blogspot.com/


13 posted on 09/23/2007 8:51:14 AM PDT by knews_hound (In order to not be banned, I no longer discuss Politics here.)
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To: knews_hound
Must’a been the plunging DJ charts that they didn’t want their remaining readers to see.
14 posted on 09/23/2007 8:56:47 AM PDT by shove_it (old Old Guardsman)
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To: shove_it

Driscoll has an excellent understanding of media history, but I question his time line of the emergence of the blogosphere. He seems to undervalue the emergence of news forums like FR in the late 90s as the link between news media and blogging, long before blogger.com and their success after 9-11 which he implies came from next to nowhere.

He’s also missing the next convergence, social networking married with blogging. Some day you’ll click on a blogger’s icon and see information from his myspace page, his ebay profile, his latest FR posts, YouTube videos etc,... (and what you see will be under his control)


15 posted on 09/23/2007 8:59:33 AM PDT by elfman2 ("As goes Fallujah, so goes central Iraq and so goes the entire country" -Col Coleman, USMC ,4/2004)
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To: elfman2

Good call. I too was wondering why forums were not included in the article.


16 posted on 09/23/2007 9:08:32 AM PDT by shove_it (old Old Guardsman)
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To: Psycho_Bunny

“Could we please stop pretending that Citizen Kane is one of the world’s Great Works of Art?”

Hearst was the only publisher who was disputing the NYTimes and Duranty’s coverup of communist genocide.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:nMsDdzdXbOQJ:www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1983/408323.shtml+hearst+duranty&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&ie=UTF-8


17 posted on 09/23/2007 9:08:42 AM PDT by spanalot
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To: Psycho_Bunny

As I understand it, the movie did achieve some technical proficiency for its time.
But I agree, I don’t find the Hearst story all that riveting. Maybe if you were part of that time, this was the ultimate rebel yell to the elites.

Is that what the fuss is?


18 posted on 09/23/2007 9:17:29 AM PDT by romanesq
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To: spanalot

?


19 posted on 09/23/2007 9:18:35 AM PDT by Psycho_Bunny
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To: Psycho_Bunny

“Citizen Kane” is the darling of the Hollywood left because it reduces Hearst to being a tragic fool.

This is in a long line of bashing by the left of all those who tried to uncover Communist Genocide starting in the 20’s.


20 posted on 09/23/2007 9:35:39 AM PDT by spanalot
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