nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
/b/ is great--if you like child porn and middle school humor
The World of Blogs
- Thread starter josef k.
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/b/ is great--if you like child porn and middle school humor
craner
Beast of Burden
I think that the fact that dicks like Guido Fawlkes and Juan Cole have managed to build or enhance their reputation or career by blogging is a good argument against the worth of blogging as journalism/comment/etc. I think it can be damaging to public debate and cultural climate, actually.
And I think we miss the role of charismatic editors and public intellectuals, actually. I quite admire, for example, the New York Intellectuals. It's a great lost tradition, combining erudition, fluency, combat, reportage, activism. I do think you have to earn your right to comment, by being good enough to get paid and published.
And I think we miss the role of charismatic editors and public intellectuals, actually. I quite admire, for example, the New York Intellectuals. It's a great lost tradition, combining erudition, fluency, combat, reportage, activism. I do think you have to earn your right to comment, by being good enough to get paid and published.
craner
Beast of Burden
Have some time for Kamm, but can't stick, or really read, Normblog, or Harry's. They get up my nose. I have a lot more time for Oliver Kamm's mother, Anthea Bell, who, alongside Dick Hockridge, translated all the Asterix books into English, and is therefore one of the greatest translators in the history on translation (read the English Asterix the Legionary if you don't believe me).
You should read William Dereszwzwzwz in the Nation on James Wood. He also misses the New York school.
Regarding the second point - it is quite clear, is it not, that many people who are paid to comment are total morons, who owe their position to the fact that their ill-considered opinions reflect some of sort of demographic.
craner
Beast of Burden
It is, but that has a lot to do with the degeneracy of the modern world, and in the last few years, the influence of bloggers. Jouralism and commentary was once a lot better than this. I am totally compromised on this point by 3 instances: I really admire and enjoy reading Christopher Hitchens, Charles Krauthammer, and Judy Miller. Apart from those slips, I am completely correct.
craner
Beast of Burden
Fine bloody book. Sontag's in there too, not just Kristol and Podhoretz.
Trotsky's always around, in the background.
Trotsky's always around, in the background.
littlebird
Wild Horses
as someone who works in advertising for some years, and has worked with print publications and newspapers specifically on and off, i will say that the free web content at the papers' homepages has had some impact on the circulation/readership most newspapers (and i am admittedly only speaking for US papers, as that is my base of knowledge), which has been rapidly declining especially over the last 10-12 years. but, overall the bigger dynamic here is the decline of a newspaper-centric society, and the aging (and diminishing population) of the newspaper reader.
from an advertising spend/negotiation perspective, most newspapers still sell their paper's homepage ad space as "added value", meaning thrown in for free if you buy space in the paper themselves. they have also taken the angle of partnering with companies such as Google, allowing Google representatives to sell print space in the newspapers, along with say a Search/keyword buy.
Sunday editions still hold their own in ritual readers, as do some of the bigger city papers with boast-worthy reputations (NY Times, Chicago Tribune, etc), but even in these cases the circulation declines year over year, as does the marketing dollars spent, and interest in advertisers to place their ads within.
blogs, and newspaper websites have an impact - but i think it goes well beyond that. i think this could veer easily into a discussion of the tech-overload society that inhabits non-third world countries, and how the age of texting, Blackberries, mobile phones, Iphones, cable/satellite television, DVRs, and yes, the internet, has altered the exchange of information. most people do not have the luxury of an hour to pour over the pages of a newspaper, not while fielding off texts from friends, emails from work, reader alerts for favorited blogs, and news blasts from particular chosen sites (and of course, more and more marketing messages).
(that was possibly more than you were asking for :slanted
scottdisco
rip this joint please
you'd already said so Ollie but can i second your view on Guido Fawkes. again from a British pov can i just add my atavistic two c against Tory flange nut Iain Dale.
agreed re Anthea Bell.
we've had the Normblog conversation before and i haven't really changed my position, which is i agree with you on some substantive points (some of it is so fussy, although that's his background bleeding out), but sometimes his commitment to universal rights really shines through (c.f. taking slight issue with Hitchens here) and you know i am down with that. (also some of his specific regional interests, such as southern Africa and southeast Asia.)
also down with the NY intellectuals, as you know.
i didn't know you'd been taught by Pollock!!
speaking of British bloggers with neat mums, Marko Hoare's mother is quite cool. (here's her obit of Tudjman in The Indie.)
thank you littlebird.
points well illustrated
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scottdisco
rip this joint please
it was actually only through Kamm i got into Hook!
that Brecht anecdote he's retold a couple of times is first-rate, when the playwright visits Hook.
really shows up Brecht's vile personal politics.
in my experience, right-wingers tend to be much more personally pleasant than left-wingers generally... i'm not sure why this is.
vimothy
yurp
Clay Shirky on newspapers and the internet: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
Agent
dgaf ngaf cgaf
not the case in Atlanta. here right wingers are bull headed. they always want to talk politics (retread issues like abortion, evolution, or gun control) yet, no matter how precisely you explain your point, they never seem to get it. you can try to explain evolution with as much neutrality as possible but there's no use.
