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To: Lane3 who wrote (8829)	4/15/2002 8:02:48 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Respond to of 21057

Ragtag collection of news diaries....? Yah, the Revolutionary Army was ragtag, too. <gg> The Beam article was an ill-informed rant, the guy is really clueless. I love it that the FT writer is starting her own weblog. Here is Virginia Postrel's reaction to that column. FACT-CHECKING: Louise Kehoe's Financial Times column on blogs isn't snotty, and it does a decent job of surveying the field. But it exhibits the kind of carelessness about facts I've come to associate (perhaps unfairly) with the British press. Andrew Sullivan didn't say he "expects to be able to draw a salary 'more than comparable' with his earnings as former editor of The New Republic." He said, "I will be able to pay myself a salary more than comparable to my salary at The New Republic. It won't make me rich, but it sure will pay the rent and then some." This is the sort of statement that a good reporter asks about. Yes, Andrew used to be editor of TNR, quite some years ago. But his most recent job there was as the TRB columnist, presumably at a significantly lower salary than the editor makes. FT readers shouldn't get the idea that blogging, even at Sullivan levels, pays executive salaries, especially since it generally doesn't pay minimum wage. Kehoe should have checked. And, while we're on the subject of former jobs, I haven't been "editor of Reason magazine" since January 2000, and I haven't even been on the Reason payroll since the first of this year. It's all right there on my bio page. You don't even have to contact me. On a more substantive point, I think the "there are no editors" point is overrated, for a couple of reasons. First, what bloggers do is one of the most important functions of editors: selecting interesting stories. By writing this page, instead of just my columns and books, I get to do the sort of thing I did at Reason, directing readers to writers I think have important or interesting things to say. What I don't get to do is commission articles on subjects I want explored but lack the time or expertise to do myself (although sometimes I get lucky and write something that inspires some other editor to assign a story). And, of course, bloggers can't poke at articles before they're printed, only afterwards. Second, and this is the point I've made in numerous interviews, the experience of writing without editors is nothing new for me. I spent 10 years doing my most important writing—my Reason columns—without an editor. Yes, I had a lot of smart colleagues, but (maybe because I'm so bossy) they mostly pointed out typos and the occasional bad sentence, not fundamental errors of fact or reasoning. Yes, writing Reason columns was harder and more disciplined than blogging, but that wasn't because there was some big mean editor standing over me. It was because I had a responsibility to the magazine and its readers, not only to do a good job but, for instance, to offer new and intelligent insights on whatever the most important story of the day, regardless of my personal inclinations. (Those insights also had to stay good for at least six weeks, because of the lag between the writing and the magazine's delivery.) And over the years, I wrote many editorials through stake-through-the-eye migraines, something I simply don't do for you dear blog readers. dynamist.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (8829)	4/15/2002 8:11:20 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

This is probably the most even handed assessment of weblogs by traditional media I've come across. I love the quote from James Lileks. Bloggers set pace in tough world of online news and publishing 12/04/2002 'Bloggers' - diary writers on variety of topics - are getting lots of Web attention Andrew Sullivan, a right-wing commentator, proudly announced last week that his "Web log" - a compilation of notes on topics ranging from paedophile priests and Middle East politics to criticism of the "liberal mainstream press" - had gone into profit. His boast comes as commercial publishers of news and commentary on the Web are struggling to stem losses in the face of an advertising slump. Mr Sullivan's financial success, albeit modest - he expects to be able to draw a salary "more than comparable" with his earnings as former editor of the New Republic - is adding fuel to a broad debate about the future of Web publishing and online journalism. Could it be that grassroots publishers will flourish as commercial investments in new media recede? Might a multitude of independent voices reclaim the Web from the giants of the media industry? Mr Sullivan is a "blogger" (short for Web-logger), one of the tens of thousands of individuals and small groups who publish such online diaries. The vast majority of Web logs are little more than regularly updated letters to friends, with rambling accounts of day-to-day life. Many see them as the latest incarnation of the personal website with family photos and holiday greetings that was popular briefly in the late 1990s. But a few dozen bloggers with broader interests, Mr Sullivan among them, have begun to attract much wider audiences. Last month, andrewsullivan.com drew more than 800,000 visits from more than 200,000 individual readers. Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason magazine, is also drawing a strong following for her dynamist.com. Oddly, bloggers with right-leaning politics seem to have gained the ascendancy. This is perhaps because they frequently express a different point of view to that on the websites of most magazines and newspapers. It is also because they are sometimes outrageous and often provocative enough to draw the attention of the mainstream media they denigrate - and so gain publicity. Once you have found one right-leaning political blog, it is not difficult to find more. Bloggers typically co-operate by providing links to one another's websites to create what is known as a "Web ring". Indeed, many Web logs are little more than a list of links to articles written by other bloggers and by journalists on traditional publications. There are "linkers and thinkers" as one blogger puts it. With no editors to tame their writing, many of the "thinking" bloggers have a tendency to self-indulgence, ranting and wavering off track. Yet at their best, bloggers bring a fresh, raw quality to their work. Ignoring, or ignorant of, stultifying style guides, they aim to "tell it like it is". Blogging has also embraced the innately interactive qualities of the internet that many professional media websites have failed to capture. While magazine and newspaper editors adapt awkwardly to a closer relationship with their readers, blog writers frequently incorporate readers' comments. "The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation," says James Lileks, both a blogger and a Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist. Similarly, the links among blogs create a dynamic environment in which a posting on one website leads another blogger to write and then another - and back and forth. For readers, the effect can be dizzying and exciting. While most bloggers comment on news reported elsewhere, some do their own reporting. They can tell the world as fast as they can type what a corporate executive or politician has said. Even wire service reporters cannot beat them because the former must file copy to a news desk before it is published. Yet the veracity of Web logs has still to be established. To the extent that bloggers report news, should they be trusted to the same degree as - or more, or less than - the traditional media? Readers will have to decide. Some bloggers regard themselves as media watchdogs. The Los Angeles Examiner, for example, carries an online Web log that specialises in upbraiding the Los Angeles Times for stories that it has allegedly missed or mis-reported. Other bloggers skewer reporters and commentators who slip up or express an opinion with which they disagree. It is no wonder that bloggers frequently receive short shrift from newspaper journalists. To Web-log optimists, Mr Sullivan's new-found profitability seems to suggest that all it takes to make money on the Web is one good writer and a computer. Mr Sullivan, and his like, can leverage the work of thousands of newspaper and magazine reporters for their sites. But Mr Sullivan remains dependent on traditional media. Not only does his site include articles he has written in print publications but his revenues come from selling books online and reader donations. Whether his profits are sustainable is open to question. In the meantime, Mr Sullivan is crowing. Thanking his online readers for their support this week, he wrote: "You have proved the naysayers wrong. Which is why the anti-blog backlash from the established media is now under way. Methinks they're a little rattled. As well they might be." ireland.com