The State of the Blogosphere

With controversy after controversy about national news coverage emerging, the public at large are still waiting for big media to sort themselves out. But most of us still need to get our news—and increasingly, we’re turning to blogs. Estimates vary widely, but there are definitely more than 3.5 million denizens of the blogosphere. And plenty of them have taken on a life of their own. Instapundit, a conservative blog, gets 233,000 views a day on average, and a more liberal counterpart, the Daily Kos, lures 324,000 daily. But can these blogs, which we are visiting in ever-increasing numbers, really be trusted?

Bloggers can generally be divided into five categories: narcissists, amateur journalists, official outlets, storytellers and linkers.

Narcissists post nothing newsworthy, except if you’re dying to know who the ten hottest guys in such and such high school are.

Amateur journalists are a different breed. They generally are disaffected, former big-media men and women who are fed up with the state of news today, and resolve to do something about it with nothing more than a satellite phone and a laptop. Witness back-to-iraq.com, where blogger Christopher Allbritton regularly updates his site with dispatches from Baghdad (until recently when Time, his stringing day job, moved him out). Funded by reader donations that have reached $15,000, Allbritton’s site leaks sarcasm and malice, but nonetheless includes some great insights and on-the-ground reporting. If you want to hear about the reality of Western journalists in Iraq—stuck in a hotel room because of fear of kidnapping—Allbritton is the man to read.

Official blogs are the polar opposite. Where people like Christopher Allbritton are trying to transcend mainstream media (with a fraction of their resources), official blogs are attempting to repackage them. Of the three major American 24-hour news outlets—MSNBC, CNN and Fox—two have dedicated staff members to permanent blogs (CNN is still lacking in this regard). Fox in particular devotes a substantial section of its website to its daily selection of five or six blogs. They seem to be mainly targeted at generating interest in Fox’s various news-talk shows. As Greta Van Susteren, host of Fox’s “On The Record,” wrote me, “I think of my blogs as an effort to bring the viewers behind the scene of our show.”

Official blogs have the advantage of being written by real journalists who take ethics and journalistic methodology seriously. Linda Vester, host of Fox’s “Day Side,” told me that in writing her blog, she “[tries] to adhere to the same journalistic principle of balance that I do when I’m on the air.” In fact, the blogs on Fox’s website may be its least partisan element. Vester says she uses her blog to “generate discussion for the following day’s broadcast”—which makes her generally even-handed in presenting the facts of the day. I say, whenever a blog is used as a tool for personal enlightenment instead of as a tool for mass brainwashing, it’s on the right track.

Still, the best blogs on the web are the storytellers, where the blogger has a point of view that no one else can easily achieve. Sergeant Chris Missick is one of these people. His blog, set in Iraq and entitled A Line in the Sand, is a soldier’s take on the war. In Missick’s case, it’s a slightly jaded take, as his blog convincingly argues that mainstream media are missing the real, positive stories in the country in their zeal to sensationalize the war and negate America’s achievements. As he wrote in an email to me: “Our soldiers in Najaf fought for hours on end to retrieve an exploded, deadlined HUMVEE, just so that pictures wouldn’t be used later on of joyful insurgents dancing on top of it, even after they had just suffered a brutal defeat. American lives were risked to prevent American and global media from spinning a victory into humiliating defeat.” Hard-hitting stories like this are what storyteller blogs are truly good at—they showcase the real power of egalitarian media. By allowing anyone to be a journalist, blogs like Missick’s open up a huge new range of perspectives for public consumption.

The real problem with blogs, then, is that very, very few of them are like Chris Missick’s, Chris Allbritton’s or even Greta Van Susteren’s. Many of the most prominent blogs these days are linkers, where the blog entries consist of pithy comments introducing links to varied, yet monolithically partisan, news sources. They exist as media digests for the lazy but opinionated. The aforementioned Instapundit, for example, heavily favors linking to conservative media outlets. Unlike the amateur journalists and storytellers, linkers do not attempt to transcend mainstream media, only to navigate them. By not challenging the assertions and assumptions of the mainstream, these blogs do a disservice to their readers.

Blogs are never going to replace mainstream media, but they can augment it. Contrasting one of Chris Missick’s entries with the latest MSNBC report from Iraq is an informative experience. However, just like with mainstream media, reading just one blog is likely to leave you in a partisan haze. Even for blogs, the rule still holds: the more sources you read, the better; and the closer you get to the truth.

Alex Slack ’06 is a history concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.