An interesting (if not entirely inevitable) development

by folkbum

I'm not sure how this fits their overall "Continuing War on Blogs" strategy, but the newly-redesigned Milwaukee♦Wisconsin Journal Sentinel's Sunday "Crossroads" section now features a Best of the Blogs from Wisconsin column, right there on page J-2.

Congrats this week to Michael Caughill ("Elliot Stearns" is the pen name), Paul Soglin, Jessica McBride, Ed Garvey, Owen Robinson, and Denis Navratil for standing with me as the first beneficiaries (victims?) of this step (volley?) in the process (war?).

Two Horrible Op-Eds

And neither of them is even by Patrick McIlheran! ***See UPDATE below about this!***

First up is one that ran in Thursday's paper, community columnist Michael King's salvo in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's continuing War on Blogs (see our previous war coverage here):

I admit that I've fallen into bad habits lately. I've been reading local political Web logs.

I know my time would have been better spent playing poker online or watching YouTube videos of Japanese teenagers lip-synching to Jessica Simpson songs, but sometimes I just can't help myself. [. . .]

For those who have never poked a mouse into the dark corners of the Cheddarsphere, as the true junkies call the online world of Wisconsin blogs, I'll provide a brief glimpse into the hype of hyperspace. [. . .] About 10% of the local blogs are worthwhile reading. They provide original content, good writing, interesting perspectives and thought-provoking analysis of current events. Avoid these at all times--unless you'd actually like to learn something.

The really interesting action occurs in the other 90% of the blogosphere. As a group, these blogs are basically an electronic version of a rowdy middle school lunchroom. Name-calling, crude insults, insider jokes, petty feuds, wounded feelings, inflated egos and unfounded claims of influence or power are the norm here.

In other words, don't bother reading the blogs, people, since it's not worth your time.

Now, I admit, there are a lot of the blogs out there, on both sides, that don't provide much or strikingly original content, and there are Cheddarsphereans who are, indeed, juvenile morons. But you know how I deal with those blogs? I don't read them. It's really that simple; I don't feel the need to point out how much better I am than they.

I don't know if King reads this humble blog, so I don't know if, maybe, he'd care to elaborate on whether he just thinks he's being funny turning off potential readers to the wide world of quality local independent non-traditional self-published internet-based journalism. Seems to me, this time of year, there are better ways to spend your procious 700 printed words than just slamming the innanity that is some segments of the Cheddarsphere.

I'm also curious if King would care to name names, as I don't think that his 90-10 ratio is even close to accurate.

Whatever King's sins here, they pale in comparison to this essay from today's paper by actual blogger Dan Kenitz of BipolarNation. I think it may be trying to be satire, but it's essentially a series of punches to the face. For example:

• If you believe that it's everyone's responsibility to vote, you're stupid. Don't vote.

• If you're disillusioned with the entire democratic process because you don't like President Bush, voted against him twice yet he still got elected, you're stupid. Don't vote.

• If you understand the depth and nature of the American military's sacrifice from Bunker Hill to Baghdad and its continued importance to our survival as a nation and as a collective soul, you're smart. Vote.

• If you want to re-elect Gov. Jim Doyle because you saw a TV ad that says Rep. Mark Green gives kickbacks to Big Oil, you're stupid. Don't vote. [. . .]

• If you think Milwaukee Republicans got carried away about Democratic voter fraud in recent years while supporting voter ID requirements that make sure votes are being cast by actual people, join the Democratic Party, change your name to John Doe and vote 1,700 times. [. . .]

• If your primary motivation for voting is that someone offered you a pack of cigarettes if you vote for Candidate X, you're an honorary Democrat. Don't vote. [. . .]

• If you get emotionally upset because a columnist called you stupid, don't vote. You're easily excitable and shouldn't have any say over who gets access to The Button.

This is not exactly set-up-roadblocks-and-purge-rolls-of-black-sounding-names levels of vote suppression, but, again, it's a damned big waste of a column just days away from a turning-point election. Calling people stupid (like on those WISN billboards) is not the way to win friends and influence people, or even promote your side to a victory. It makes you look like a bully and a thug, and pretty petty to boot.

Well, I don't know, that's perhaps all that's left for some conservatives--the ones who've given up actual conservative values to support the the moral vacuousness that is much of the state and national Republican leadership. They can't really talk about small government or personal liberty any more now, can they? They're just kind of stuck calling names (maybe Michael King's next piece can be about his fellow MJS community columnists!) and metaphorically beating you up for your lunch money.

I'm not bitter that I wasn't selected as a community columnist, that's not why I'm writing this. I have a much better (and more flexible) gig here, that I love dearly, even without the $25 a post, and I'd have this exact same reaction whether King and Kenitz shared newspaper space with me or not. But if this is the best the MJS could come up with for the week before the mid-term Congressional election, before the election for governor, then the editors are in bigger trouble than I thought.

In sum, just because every story needs a good moral: Do vote. Do read the blogs that inspire and inform you, and do spread the word about those blogs and how good they are.

Don't act like a thug in print and think it's funny.

UPDATE! P-Mac came through with a blog post praising the dickens out of Kenitz's op-ed! Calls Kenitz "brilliant"! That means I can impugn the McIlheran on this one, too!

As Rhiannon of Not to be Televised says, in the comments to this very post, "The MJS needs to realize that publishing this sort of thing makes them look like crap journalists." I would add, so does praising it.

And, while you're at it, read Seth on these same topics.

We deserve a better legislature

Yes. Yes we do. One-stop shopping there for my northwestern Wisconsin readers.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Continuing War on Blogs

The most recent volley has been fired, sadly, by Barbara Miner, whose work--particularly her work for Rethinking Schools--I usually enjoy immensely. Miner's essay essentially dismisses blogs, for being too numerous, too white and male, too exhausting, and (ironically) too co-opted by the mainstream now to be cool.

I'll give her the last one (Barney's Blog, anyone?), but I say it's ironic, becuase the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is busy trying to co-opt this blog game for itself at the same time it's trying to turn people away from real blogs like the one you're currently holding in your hands.

Follow the trail: It starts innocuously, with the paper giving its columnists and some reporters their own "blogs," which, the cynical me thinks, is an easy way to squeeze more content out of them for the same salary. For a long time, it was mostly sports guys, and some regular folk conned into blogging for the man through MKE or about the Packers. But the corral of corporate bloggers grows ever larger, with two of the most recent inductees being Eugene Kane and Spivak and Bice.

It is important to note, kind of as a prelude to the war's Lexington and Concord, that Greg Borowski article I was quoted in which, while not negative about the blogs, was generally dismissive of blogs' overall power and effectiveness. Call that the beginning of the strategic air war, so to speak: the softening up of the public so that they would be ready to ignore the blogs.

Kane opened the war wide when he wrote about blogging in his regular paper-and-ink column. "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it," Kane asked, "has it made a sound? In a nutshell, that's what I think about most blogs." Plugging his own blog as one of "the best," he blanketly labeld most of us as long-winded ax-grinders. He took more specific shots at particular Milwaukee-area bloggers, following up with more shots on his own tepid blog.

Spivak and Bice are blogging with the explicit task of "trudg[ing] through the scores of local political blogs so you don’t have to." Isn't that nice? Now you don't need to traffic your local independent bloggers at all, since the Spice Boys will tell you what is important.

Several other op-eds over the last couple of weeks have laid into blogs, including one by my own favorite target, Patrick McIlheran. And now there's one by Miner, prominent in Sunday's "Crossroads." Meantime, the Journal Sentinel is promoting its (presumably more responsible) blogs heavily on its website's front page.

This is absolutely ridiculous, but I guess this is kind of what happens when something gets commercialized, be it indy music, indy film, or whatever. I don't think it's because the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is afraid of us; I think, instead, they see the writing on the wall about traditional newspapers. I know, I know--every time a new medium comes along (radio, TV, cable news, the internet), the demise of the newspapers has been prematurely predicted. But the blogs are different in one significant way: No longer are we news and opinion consumers limited to professionals (who, after all, populate radio, TV, and cable news); we are able to get content from anyone, anywhere, anytime. Audience beware, of course, because not everyone is trustworthy or even a particularly good speller. But the multiplicity of voices is, to me, the singular appeal of blogs. I get enough Eugene Kane in the paper; I don't need him five days a week, several times a day. (But he, also, needs a spellchecker.)

If I were a better military tactician, I would propose our (bloggers') counterattack. But I'm one of those lousy pinko hippy pacifist types. I'm sure the gung-ho warriors among my colleagues in the right half of the Cheddarsphere will think of something.

I think Eugene Kane is talking about me . . .

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a column by Eugene Kane about blogging:

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, has it made a sound? In a nutshell, that's what I think about most blogs.

The Internet is overrun with blogs. These personal Web sites are written by both amateur and professional journalists with an ax to grind or strong opinions they are dying to express. Many of them are read by only a small group of readers, sometimes just family or friends.

Despite the current hype over bloggers taking on the mainstream media--"MSM" to many bloggers--I believe there's little chance that blogging will replace traditional forms of reporting and commentary. At least, not in the near future.

Following that, Kane tsk-tsks over a local blogger who disagreed with--and slammed pretty good--one Eugene Kane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (I am waiting for Patrick McIlheran's new blog, which, with any luck, will be complaints about me.)

Belle, who is studying journamlism, and has worked for, as Kane says we call it, the "MSM," has already noted the all-too-common fact that the headline writer didn't read Kane's column, labeling it "Blogging gives everyone a voice." While I doubt Kane disagrees with that, he certainly doesn't seem excited about some people's voices being out there. He pretty clearly disses Jessica McBride (who seems excited about that) and summons the bravado to tell bloggers, "Bring it on." (He should be careful: The last most famous demand to "bring it on" lead to two years of dramatic and deadly insurgency in Iraq.)

And I have to say that I hate "MSM." Not in the sense that I am in some kind of crusade against popular news sources, but rather that the term "MSM" and "mainstream media" were developed by conservatives primarily to further their claims of indemic victimhood. "MSM" = "liberal media." And it's stupid: For one, the most pouplar bloggers have readerships many times higher than some newsweeklies and daily newspapers. The figures Kane cites for jsonline--the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's web presence--are 2 million visitors a month. DailyKos, by contrast, gets 15 or 16 million hits a month. For another, the most avid users of the term "MSM" are members of the "MSM." Charlie Sykes, for example, is an employee of the city's biggest media conglomerate and a highly-rated radio talk-show host, and he delights in complaining about that rotten "MSM." Rush Limbaugh, Mark Belling, Sean Hannity, and so on, all perhaps the very definition of mainstream, piss and moan about the "MSM." As I said, it's stupid. Stupid and a half.

But what really gets me about Kane--despite the irony of his pimping his own blog while dissing others'--is that I think he complains specifically about me:

It's my humble opinion that the best blogs--like mine at www.jsonline.com/links/raisingkane --don't rant and rave as much as refer readers to interesting stories and commentary from other sources.

Blogging is best when it's a clearinghouse for ideas rather than a long-winded exercise in self-congratulatory rhetoric.

I mean, if I cut the long-windedness and self-congratulation from my blog, all that would be left is the "Friday Random Ten" and an occasional lazy all-link post or two.

Look, I read blogs because I like the words and opinions of those bloggers, not because I'm looking for linky goodness. To me, bloggers are the "other sources" with "interesting stories." And if he can't see that, he'll remain stuck in his traditional-media (preferred term) world. I will be happy to bring it.

[Others are bringing it, too: See here and here to start.]