Who Cares What You Think? Blog, and Find Out.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 22, 2002; Page C01
InstaPundit just posted some thoughts on Ramesh Ponnuru's response to Virginia Postrel's argument on cloning, along with a rebuttal from WhattheHeck.com.
"There's been an explosion of anti-Bush commentary from pro-cloning libertarian bloggers in recent days," Ponnuru had declared on NationalReview.com. "Blogorrhea, we could call it. It's probably not worth responding to their posts, since they are both beyond argument and politically ineffectual." That drew a quick rebuttal from Postrel.
Welcome to the blogosphere, a rapidly expanding universe where legions of ordinary folks are launching Weblogs -- blogs for short -- with such titles as "Ramblings of a Blue-Collar Slob" and "The Brigade of Bellicose Women" -- that feature lots of reader feedback.
"It's astounding to me," says Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who launched his site (InstaPundit.blogspot.com) last August with the hope of attracting a couple of hundred readers. He hit a new record last Monday with 49,663 visits. "It's the dirty little secret of punditry being exposed, that a lot of people can do it."
Sure, some of these one-person blatherings are self-indulgent, and many bloggers spend so much time quibbling with each other that there's an echo chamber effect. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam recently dismissed the realm as a "journalistic medium where no thought goes unpublished." But the arena has produced fresh, clever, idiosyncratic, real-time musings by all kinds of people whose voices would otherwise be heard only at the local Starbucks.
Still, says freelance writer John Scalzi, on Scalzi.com: "There's just one minor problem with this 'blog reaching critical mass' story: It's a lie. Or more accurately, any representation by the 'blog nation (or its compatriots) as being a threat to the conventional media . . . is wildly overstated."
Probably. But this electronic pamphleteering provides a compelling alternative by critiquing (or just outright slamming) the mainstream press. And the attraction is such that a number of magazine and newspaper reporters (including this one) now write Web-only columns.
The first blogger to make an impact was Matt Drudge, followed by a wave that included Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, Joshua Micah Marshall and Postrel, a former Reason editor.
Now the lineup features Libertarian Samizdata, JunkYardBlog, VodkaPundit, QuasiPundit, MuslimPundit, The Daily Bleat, USS Clueless and Asparagirl, who describes herself thusly:
"Well, for starters, I'm 22, I live in New York, I'm a web geek by trade and by nature, and I'm a recent graduate (finally!) of the University of Pennsylvania. I have a clean driving record, an adorable five-month-old kitten named Sammy, a passion for Ben and Jerry's ice cream, a possibly masochistic preference for right-wing political candidates, and a very nasty tendency to procrastinate."
Asparagirl (asparagirl.com/blog) -- an IBM Web designer who asked that her name not be used because of "overly protective Scarsdale Jewish parents" -- says she's surprised to be drawing more than 1,000 visitors a day. "If anything, it makes me kind of nervous. As a Web geek, I just wanted to play around with the new technology."
Amy Welborn, a former Catholic high school teacher who writes about spiritual matters, calls her site "My Life In Between Naps -- The Baby's, Not Mine."
Anyone can play. Susanna Cornett, in Cut on the Bias (bias.blogspot.com), says: "Apparently the buzz in Washington right now is that Republicans are whining because James Carville and Paul Begala, newly on 'Crossfire,' are 'too good at what they do,' so the word is out to boycott. . . . I have to say that when I saw the matchup -- Begala/Carville vs. Novak/some-guy-I-have-never-heard-of (yes, I'm not up on all the political guys), I thought -- wow. Somebody screwed up . . . Carville is a killer."
Says Cornett, a Jersey City grant writer and doctoral student who averages 300 readers: "I'd love to have thousands of readers, but I'm pleased with how many readers I've picked up in just two months. It's pretty cool."
Sullivan, who draws 75,000 unique visitors a week, says that blogs "allow you to get your fix of political opinion, arguments and gossip very quickly. It's sort of the fast food of political opinion magazines." And, he freely admits, "you're writing 1,000 words a day. You'd have to be George Orwell not to write something stupid or wrong at times."
AndrewSullivan.com turned its largest profit last month, $6,000, based on the voluntary contributions that many sites now solicit and his online book club, which gets a 15 percent cut of purchases made through a link to Amazon.com.
Some bloggers offer special expertise, such as the military man who writes SgtStryker.com: "I'm proud of what I do . . . but I would prefer to be drug out back and shot than sound like those dumb [jerks] in a lot of the military forums who wouldn't know combat if it jumped up and shot them in the [rear]."
Clearly, it's a perfect pastime for anyone with an attitude and some spare time. "I have a short attention span," Reynolds says. "Sometimes I write during my 15 minutes of free time while my daughter is watching a cartoon." |
