Free Republic

Blogs: New Medium, Old Politics Jim Boulet noticed that CBS News chief political writer David Paul Kuhn wants the federal government to regulate bloggers. Why on earth would CBS News have an axe to grind with bloggers? Oh, that's right, the bloggers exposed CBS News as a bunch of hacks...The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum finds Kuhn's column "embarrassingly inaccurate."

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year's presidential campaign tops U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's list of the 10 words of the year. Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks," was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

It is [said]... the only sure winner in American politics is the media.... Maybe not this time. Big Media lost big. But it was more than a loss. It was an abdication of authority. Large media institutions, such as CBS or the New York Times, have been regarded as nothing if not authoritative. In the Information Age, authority is a priceless franchise. But it is this franchise that Big Media, incredibly, has just thrown away. It did so by choosing to go into overt opposition to one party's candidate, a sitting president. It stooped to conquer... National Guard... Abu Ghraib......

Blogs play critical role in campaigns In the right corner are the Free Republic's self-described "FReepers." On the left, the legions of Kos. At stake are the hearts and minds of millions of American voters. Free Republic and the DailyKos are two of the ideologically driven Web logs, or blogs, that collectively have captured hundreds of thousands of readers, helped shape and speed the presidential campaign's dialog, and have contributed substantially to the powerful grassroots mobilization that many analysts say could tip the balance in Tuesday's election. From e-voting to blogging, technology is roiling the political landscape.The political season has...

A century ago, most large cities supported several newspapers. Each offered a news product tailored to the interests of a particular readership segment, typically defined by party affiliation. In the heyday of the partisan press, editors didn't try to offer something for everyone. They offered a package that fit the leanings of their readership. When I mention Web logs, or blogs, here at The Star, colleagues sometimes ask, “Are they reliable?” That was the old rap: Blogs don't have editors. Maybe so, and certainly some blogs are more reliable than others. But right now they look more reliable than, say,...

Call-In Political Influence of Bloggers C-SPAN, Washington Journal Washington, District of Columbia (United States) ID: 183593 - 2 - 09/26/2004 - 0:30 - No Sale Klam, Matthew, Contributor, [New York Times] Magazine Mr. Klam talks about his cover story in the "New York Times" magazine on bloggers and their growing influence on politics. He will respond to telephone calls, faxes, and electronic mail from viewers.

Nine blocks north of Madison Square Garden, next door to the Emerging Artists Theater, where posters advertised ''The Gay Naked Play'' (''Now With More Nudity''), the bloggers were up and running. It was Republican National Convention week in New York City, and they had taken over a performance space called the Tank. A homeless guy sat at the entrance with a bag of cans at his feet, a crocheted cap on his head and his chin in his hand. To reach the Tank, you had to cross a crummy little courtyard with white plastic patio furniture and half a motorcycle...

AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - Hundreds of thousands of readers know him simply as "Mike," the creator of rathergate.com, an Internet blog spearheading a petition drive demanding the resignation of CBS News anchor Dan Rather because of his alleged liberal biases. But what the visitors to his blog did not know when he launched it early last week was that "Mike" is Mike Krempasky, a 29-year-old Republican political operative from suburban Washington, D.C., a detail some might have found relevant. The conservative bloggers who ignited a frenzy this month over allegations that Rather relied on forged documents in a Sept....

"Still in relative infancy, the blogosphere - that new galaxy within the journalism universe wherein citizen journalists known as bloggers (short for keepers of Web logs) chat among themselves through mutual links and commentary - has defined itself in large part as a vehicle for challenging the mainstream media (MSM)."

Bloggers Making Phone Calls (We can do that?): Trouble with that Boston Globe forgery-knockdown piece. ... Instapundit remains a good clearing house for the right-blogosphere's efforts in the developing CBS Monkeyfishing story. (The CBSers willl pay for that "pajama" crack.) ... P.S.: Sorry for all the ongoing kf font difficulties. I should have used a Selectric! 2:53 P.M.

The two sides remain entrenched, their rhetorical sallies increasing in ferocity, their claims and counterclaims ricocheting through the political landscape. Democrats and Republicans? Nope: that’s so 2000. This time the war is between the new and the old media, between established pillars of journalism and a bunch of new, ornery and sometimes reckless upstarts.It’s the subtext of the 2004 campaign and it has already begun to shape the American presidential race in ways that would have been difficult to accomplish two years ago, let alone four. There are, I think, three genuinely new power brokers in American politics in this...

When the Democrats issued credentials to between 30 and 50 bloggers and treated them to a special "breakfast for bloggers" at this week's Boston convention, you sensed something is changing in the media. This change was confirmed by CNNs decision to review and discuss, on the air, what bloggers (those people who produce an online informational web log or "blog") have to say about the convention. Democrats realized the power of the Internet with the Howard Dean campaign as they witnessed his overnight boost in the primaries thanks to the Internet and blogs. Now the party thinks it may be...

"Even as many networks are reducing their coverage of the increasingly predictable political conventions, the political blogs, which have become a fruitful alternative for individual voices, have been ablaze over the prospect of officially covering conventions for the first time. Ms. Merritt is one of about three dozen bloggers who have been given press credentials for the Democratic convention in Boston, which begins Monday. Another, Ana Marie Cox from the Washington gossip site Wonkette.com, will be working as a correspondent for MTV."

A Woodbury resident admits popular Web diary called 'Plain Layne' was all a sham San Jose Mercury News For more than three years, a twenty-something Minnesota woman named Layne Johnson lured thousands of people to her Web site every day with a poignant and brutally honest diary of her life. She was witty, sexually adventurous and intimate with her readers, sharing photos of her travels and exchanging private e-mails and instant messages with fans. She posted messages to other people's Web logs and created personal profiles at social networking sites. Many readers felt deeply connected to her. Then, three weeks...

.Rise of the MilblogsSome of the best sources of information on the war are from the people actually fighting it--and their blogs.by Hugh Hewitt 03/12/2004 12:00:00 AM AS THE WAR enters a phase where most of the fighting is far removed from the networks' cameras, it gets harder and harder to find reliable news on the conflict's many fronts.Unless you read the milblogs, that is. "Milblogs" is short for "military blogs"--online journals run by active duty military or reservists who have returned to civilian life for the time being. These first person accounts of the world and the nation through...

A couple days ago I launched a new blog for my friend Jeremy. I've known Jeremy for around 6 years and he's always been interested in computing and technology and was about to set up a blog of his own before he left for Army Basic training on the 20th. We both decided it would be a cool idea to "blog" his training, but there was one problem. The Army relegates the time of its recruits and does not for very good reason allow them free access to the internet or in some cases phone calls home. So that...

Why did the New York Times ignore Baghdad blogger announcements and accounts of a big pro-democracy demonstration?Article HERE

<p>A powerful new networking tool for the politically plugged-in and hangers-on, the constant online chatter broadens campaign discourse and accelerates the news cycle.</p> <p>Such journals, known as blogs, may not be doing much to sway undecided voters, but analysts say they strongly impact the media, campaign consultants and activists.</p>

Did Johnny Hart -- the beloved creator of "B.C." and one of the most widely read cartoonists on Earth -- sneak a vulgar defamation of Islam into the comics pages last week? The question was raised yesterday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based civil rights group, in an e-mail to its membership. Hart and his syndicate say no -- that a simple, straightforward joke is being misconstrued. That may well be true, but the 73-year-old cartoonist's history of evangelizing his Christian beliefs through his comic cavemen have left many people doubtful. The cartoon, which appeared Nov. 10...