Posted on 10/23/2005 12:18:04 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
T here's been a lot of excitement about blogs since they broke into public consciousness during the 2004 election. They are now growing at an astronomical rate. The blog search engine Technorati now tracks almost 20 million of them, and various estimates of the number of blog users range from 32 million to 50 million Americans.
Blogophiles see blogs as a new way for citizens to express themselves and, especially among the political bloggers, a new way for citizens to talk back to the "MSM" -- the mainstream media. According to Mike Godwin, legal director of a First Amendment advocacy group called Public Knowledge, "A.J. Liebling famously commented that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Well, we all own one now."
But in all the excitement and hype, it's easy to overlook the fact that in some ways political blogs are not so different from or even separate from the MSM they often love to hate.
One similarity is found in emerging patterns of Web traffic. Blog abundance creates a paradox: Given more information choices than ever, most people economize, trying to find efficient ways to tame the information tide. So most regular users rely on a few blogs for most of their information. That's one reason why a handful of political blogs gets the lion's share of traffic. A recent study of 2 million Internet users found that the top four blog "hosts," such as blogspot.com, are visited by more than 5 million visitors per quarter. Unique visitors to the Drudge Report and the conservative blog freerepublic.com number2 million to 3 million per quarter, twice as many as their nearest competitors and dwarfing countless smaller blogs.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
I guess this writer is just incompetent.
...thats the liberal way of saying you have to be wrong once in a while
Doogle
There was a ton of posts on 'The Plame Game'... sandwiched in between the brutal street-fighting over Miers.
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Richard Poe and Jim Robinson have predicted in writing that HILLARY knows she will have to go right thru us Freepers to get back into the Oval Office.
It has been stated here that the newest Campaign Finance Law already restricts Blogs' participation, a la Swift Boats and our online support of them online, in the final months of the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
For our own future well being we must set straight anyone that comes out now to try and place us in Blog Country.
We are and always have been an Internet Forum, period.
An Anti-HILLARY Internet Forum to be sure, but an Internet Forum just the same.
...NEVER a BLOG.
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For the millions of Americans who regularly go to blogs for political news, what picture of reality are they getting?
Reality IS. There aren't several "pictures" of reality. Only different points of view. Free Republic is the greatest site out there for REALITY.
Gee I guess they missed all the Valerie Plame Flame Blame Game threads and reples. May we should have made thae past ones extra bold pt 48 IMPACT FONT so they could have seen them. Maybe we should make the ones to come that size and type face so the blind as a bat RATS can see them.
Who's Valerie Plame?
Oh yes, of course. It has worked so very well at all levels of journalism. :-P
I say we elect Dan Rather king and forget everything else.
He may be wrong, but at least he'll cry about it.
:>)
I think if anyone but you had stated that, I'd launch into
my tirade about how FR isn't a blog, you n00b you.
Precisely because they are not bound by any claims to objectivity, most bloggers spend their time zeroing in on a couple of stories or story angles they think the MSM are ignoring, suppressing or skewing.
I think if this fact bothers the MSM, then we are doing great.
They don't like competition in spreading ideas unless
the competition spreads their ideas. Full speed ahead!
If the Oregonian had taken a reading comprehension course, you might have also explained to them that a "blog" is an ongoing journal. A "forum" is a public gathering place for discussion. Maybe we ought to use Free Republic Forum as the name. NOT. I would rather they stay confused about what FR is.
The FR cats played with it more than it deserved..
Its dead but still quivering.. A quivering dead mouse only fools kittens..
The Viking felines are stalk live prey..
I wasn't aware that FR was a blog. I thought it was a forum.
Anyway, ain't it funny how the same people who whine about FR not being "fair and balanced" are mysteriously quiet about the DNC, DU and DK not being "fair and balanced"?
Their silence on that subject means one of two things:
Honestly, I don't know which possibility disgusts me the most.
In this respect, these top blogs end up playing a role very similar to what The New York Times -- a favorite target of many bloggers -- does for the MSM.
Which raises a second way that blogs aren't so different from the MSM: Both choose what to cover and how. This power to set the agenda and frame the story is exactly what bothers most critics of the mainstream news, and many blogs' very reason-for-being is to critique these decisions. Precisely because they are not bound by any claims to objectivity, most bloggers spend their time zeroing in on a couple of stories or story angles they think the MSM are ignoring, suppressing or skewing. Consequently, the world-according-to-the-blogs is a very skewed place, indeed.
Is the NYSlime still claiing to be objective? Didn't the editor just come out and admit how slanted their coverage is? They know their reporters are lying but they publish it anyway?????
I live in Oregon. I think the Oregonian is best used as dead fish wrapper.
So here's a peep to the author of the lie!
barely a peep could be heard about that story."
depends on the definition of "is" ?
maybe the author was referring to "peep" as the son of "jeep" from the Oxford English Dictionary - 1941 NY Times (Oct 26) The one-half ton 'jeep' and the one-quarter ton 'peep' reconnaissance combat vehicles
Shouldn't that be more correctly stated as "the Oregonian is at best, a "used" dead fish wrapper". It more correctly gives the true "odor" of the situation.
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