Day: September 15, 2002

Jonah Goldberg’s Straw Man about the Importance of Web Logs

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has an article in the American Enterprise in which he tries to bring the hype about weblogs down a notch or two. But Goldberg seems to be tilting at windmills. Goldberg’s thesis can be summed up by the final paragraph of his article,

Should the marketplace show its appreciation by generating significant revenue for a blogger, you know what will happen? A big newspaper or magazine will offer him or her a job. ThatÂ’s why McDonaldÂ’s sells fajitas now. And thatÂ’s why bloggers arenÂ’t going to put serious media publications out of business.

But who, other than Dave Winer and Doc Searls, thinks that weblogs are going to replace the traditional media anytime soon?

What weblogs are going to do is gradually take the sort of niche market that magazines like National Review and The Nation currently occupy. Goldberg vastly underestimates the reach that weblogs have in those niches.

Look at the whole Michael Bellesisles controversy, for example. The National Review has certainly done a lot of original reporting on that controversy, but when Glenn Reynolds posted a link to a PDFed law review article on the topic, around 100,000 people (including myself) downloaded it. Does National Review have that kind of reach? I doubt it?

Besides, most of the right and left weblogs represent versions of liberalism and conservatism that often fly in the face of the orthodoxy that afflicts The National Review and The Nation and acts as a filter on what they publish (besides which, those magazines are just plain boring. When Reynolds posted about how much more fun conservatives have, surely he wasn’t talking about the boring folks who inhabit NR’s universe).

UPI ‘Journalist’ Defends Ecoterrorism

One of the things that frustrates me to no end is that very few reporters publish their e-mail addresses, so it is impossible for me to contact them and let them know just how inadequate they are. This morning it is United Press International’s Dan Whipple who wrote an op-ed on environmental terrorism that soft pedal’s the phenomenon based largely on his inability to actually do any research on the topic.

According to Whipple,

Despite a bonfire of publicity, and apocalyptic warnings from property rights activists and congressional committees, the list of ELF’s “accomplishments” is small: Two “actions” in 1996, three in 1997, eight in 1998, three in 1999, nine in 2000 and four in 2001.

In fact, ELF committed at least 22 actions in 2001 causing at least $1.6 million in damage (the actual damage total was probably closer to double that). How do I know this? Because the North American Liberation Front Press Office published a report listing all 2001 actions. Apparently Whipple prefers to just pull his numbers out of the air rather than go to the source.

Moreover, Whipple wonders if ELF terrorism is really terrorism,

Having pulled up a few survey stakes myself, I’m not in a position to take the high moral ground. But is it terrorism? Is even burning a restaurant — and we all know how tough it is to find a good restaurant — on the same level as blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., or leveling the World Trade Center?

Is burning down an abortion clinic or a black church the same thing as flying a plane into a building? Of course not, but it is nonetheless still terrorism, as is environmental terrorism.

I also find it odd that UPI has hired as an environmental journalist someone who admits engaging in illegal acts to disrupt logging. Would they hire someone who admitted illegal acts in anti-abortion protests to cover women’s issues?

Whipple continues,

There is an enormous difference between principled civil disobedience — including monkeywrenching — and murder. The word “terrorism” has been thrown around too loosely.

I wonder if he’d feel that way if people burned down his house or the office where he works because of ideological reasons. Somehow, I doubt it.

Source:

Blue Planet: Ecoterrorism redefined. Dan Whipple, United Press International, Sept. 13, 2002.