HW 19: How Important are Blogs to the Media?

My chosen section of the piece, Web of Influence written by Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell in Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by David Kline and Dan Burstein is about how the blogosphere influences what the media covers. They address how if the blogosphere wasn’t around the media often wouldn’t cover the stories that people are actually interested in. Consider for example in 2004 a writer for WomensWallStreet.com posted online her account of suspicious activity by Syrian passengers on board an airplane she was on and her absolute terror in not knowing whether or not they were a risk to her safety. Even more important 2 million people read her blog and soon thereafter media outlets like NPR, MSNBC, Time, and the New York Times picked up the story and prompted a national debate about the racial profiling that airlines were doing post 9/11. In short whether they like it or not personal opinion and commentary are important things for the media to consider and blogs will have a compelling effect on what the media covers.
http://Womenswallstreet.com

HW 17b: Where Do You Go For Political Advice?

I would definitely use Daily Kos as opposed to Wonkette for helping me decide who to vote for in the upcoming election. The Wonkette site is more tongue in cheek, sarcastic stuff and Daily Kos is more serious and scholarly, easier to trust. Wonkette is more about gossip and who is screwing who than about the candidates in the upcoming election. Ana Marie Cox evens says it in an interview in a book by Dan Burstein and David Kline called, Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture, “Wonkette is me after too many margaritas” (Cox 57). She doesn’t think the quality of blog writing is very good and argues that it is a creative output and that most often that is just not any good either. Daily Kos on the other hand takes themselves very seriously and they work to mobilize the politically active so that they can use their influence to win the upcoming election. I think the Wonkette is great for a laugh and some interesting tidbits, but when you want to get serious about the election I would head to Daily Kos.

HW 17: Issues such as these need all the attention they can get!

I chose Broadsheet to look for my favorite post of the week and I found a post called, Planned Parenthood Will See You Now written by Lynn Harris. I really enjoyed this post because in a world where the mainstream media is being tightly controlled this type of article is just what we need. It highlights the problems women are facing getting affordable healthcare, let alone being able to walk into a clinic without getting harassed. Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards explains that, “We are concerned that the struggles the Aurora center faced in opening may be reflective of a growing battle against politics trumping health care, and increased barriers to reproductive health care access” (qtd. in Harris). In making this comment Richards calls attention to the increasing politicizing of healthcare and how detrimental that is to Americans who really need medical attention. It is so important that these types of issues get the attention they deserve so kudos to Broadsheet!
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/10/03/aurora_clinic_opens/index.html

HW 16: Broadsheet Follows the Rules

I looked into the Broadsheet blog and tried to see if they were following Robert Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Manifesto. It’s a little hard to say if they are following the principles because it is not a blog about a product or company, it’s a blog about news and politics, community, opinion etc. I think perhaps there needs to be a different set of principles for blogs that aren’t about businesses. I think there are a few that coincide like using a human voice, I think on the Broadsheet blog they do that very well they don’t try to sound like a newspaper or magazine, they use their real voice which does help speed up the process I’m sure. Also they have links to their “competitors” namely other blogs similar to theirs. They have the title as “Blogs We Read” which is a nice touch because it gives the blogs importance. It’s a way of being nice and saying nice things about them. Again it’s hard to say what standards they aren’t following because they aren’t really promoting their business, they are a community.

HW 14: What Newspaper Are You Reading?

In reading Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture I came across an interview with Nick Denton called, Take an Obsession and Feed It. Although it is true that he argues, “I don’t think anyone is going to replace, anytime soon, the role of The New York Times in providing, for example, reporting from Baghdad” (Denton 156) he is saying that blogs provide a different service. As an illustration he says that blogs will have an edge in helping people decide what they want to read and what they think is important nationally. As a result people won’t be as loyal to one newspaper, they can mix and match stories according to what’s important to them. For instance what people are doing with TiVo, they are creating their own TV channel in essence and that is what we can do with blog reporting.

HW 13: Why Blogs Matter

Some people are under the impression that blogs have only to do with media, politics or personal issues. The argument made by Stephen Baker and Heather Green in an article called, Blogs Will Change Your Business in the book, Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture written by David Kline and Dan Burstein says, “if anyone thought blogs had only to do with media or politics or personal issues, they were missing one of the biggest elephants in the room: big business” (Baker, Green 221). While I understand that blogs will be very important to big business in terms of advertising and public image, at the same time the effect that they have had and will have on politics, social and personal ideas is going to be more profound. For example the short lived presidential campaign of Howard Dean proved that, “political bloggers can mobilize and unite large groups of citizens in ways that make insurgent candidates more viable” (Kline 14). The fact that blogs can have such an effect on something so important as who the next president is, and whether or not someone dies, (in the case of Ayelet Waldman whose blog readers alerted family of a suicide threat posted on her blog) is more important in the long run than big business making even more money.

HW 11: Can Bloggers Change the International Political Scene?

I chose to review a blog called The Kenyan Pundit, started by a Harvard law student named Ory Okollah who is from Kenya. The first thing you notice is the somewhat blurry aerial picture of what appears to be a street in Kenya. There are many links on the side to other relevant blogs, including some sarcastic ones like, “People Magazine is so 2004” with links to their stories underneath. It seems to me that only Ory Okolloh blogs on it and others leave their comments. There is a column that links all of the different categories she writes about some of which are titled, Africa, Africa and Blogs, American Politics, and Development and Aid. The style of writing varies with the categories, if she is writing under her Baby KP category she is pretty informal but with the political blogs she is more formal.
In reading an interview titled, Making Global Voices Heard with Rebecca MacKinnon in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture MacKinnon reports, “Basically she [Okolloh] has become a hub figure who has spawned the growth of the Kenyan blogosphere” (MacKinnon 330). What MacKinnon is saying is that by having such a blog in existence it is linking other such bloggers and making them all be a part of the political scene. I agree with MacKinnon’s assessment of the blog, it really does have all the aspects needed to create discussion and change. Although I grant that some might say that these blogs are still in their very early days and can’t make such a significant change so easily, I still maintain that just the existence of such blogs opens the doors for open communication and that is the very foundation of democracy.

HW 9: Who Are You Blogging For?

In reading David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture I came across an interview with Ayelet Waldman called, A Weblog Saved My Life Last Night. Waldman reminds us that in this frenzy to connect with people of like minds through blogging, there are hidden risks. As a novelist she insisted that, “writing so openly about her personal life was draining both her and her husband of story ideas. Plus it was taking up too much spare time, usually two or three hours a day” (Waldman 308). Waldman’s point is that while blogging felt right for her in the moment, upon further reflection she realized it wasn’t doing her life that much good. I’m of two minds about Waldman’s claim. On the one hand, I agree that blogging can bring unforeseen risks. On the other hand, I’m not sure that blogging can be seen as the whole reason her work was suffering. I think that blogging to reach out to people and connect is a wonderful thing, and her claiming that it was somehow responsible for her own writing going downhill seems to me like she is using blogging as a scapegoat. Perhaps there needs to be a balance between what you write about and why you’re going online. Is it to write and be heard, or is it to connect and make friends?

HW 7: Are You There For Your Kids?

I think that, just like everything else, kids need to do things in moderation. While I don’t think it’s necessary to monitor everything that kids write online, I do think it’s a good idea for parents and guardians to know what their kids are up to online. There are many dangers that kids can unknowingly get into, and they don’t have the capacity to protect their selves from it, that’s their parent’s job. If parents could keep an open dialog with their kids about what they are doing online and the names of the sites they use etc., that would alleviate some of the fear of unchecked online consumption. Another idea is to have the computer in the family room, that way kids know they can be looked in on at any time by parents. In a piece called My So-Called Blog that Emily Nussbaum wrote for Dan Burstein and David Kline’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture she complicates matters further by asserting that, “this new technology has provided a million ways to stay in touch, it has also acted as both an amplifier and a distortion device for human intimacy” (Nussbaum 351). In other words Nussbaum is saying that now kids are spending so much time online and staying in touch with their friends, that they are losing out on the real intimacy of face to face conversation and relationships. They are putting themselves out there per say with their online confessionals and some would say giving in to being judged, but isn’t that what we all do in order to have an intimate relationship with someone? This goes back to having the parents there to act as a sounding board for these kids, so that they have someone to explain to them the complexities of relationships and life in general. On the computer or not, my point is that parents need to be there for their kids to help them sort out the hardships of life.

HW 5b: Whose Voice Matters Most?

In, I Blog, Therefore I Am a piece in David Kline’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture Kline urges the readers to see the effect of the accessibility of blogs to everyone, not just the typical elite, educated scholars. Kline emphasizes this with saying that we have already witnessed this dramatic shift in the way that political bloggers have played such a high profile role in bringing about change in the political arena. He also argues that it is affecting the cultural and arts arena.
In my view, however the traditional elite’s opinion will always hold sway over any others. It doesn’t matter that the ordinary now has a voice as well, the elites opinion will still be respected more that the non-elites. I think it’s a great thing that the ordinary person now has the access to voice their own opinion in matters where before their opinion didn’t count. Just because their voices are now being heard doesn’t mean that the elite’s voice will not. In fact all one has to do is make sure that they know whose opinion they are hearing, and make their judgments based on that.

HW 4: What Are Your Clothes Promising You?

In response to reading “The Voice of the Customer,” in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I noticed a pair of Gap jeans laying a cross a chair in my room. I got to wondering what sort of promises the Gap company has made to me, the consumer. It must have made an impression because I shop there a lot. I think the idea originally with the Gap was nice, trendy, up to date clothing at a reasonable price maybe intended for the upper lower class and middle class, the upper class could perhaps get away with buying their basic necessities there like white t-shirts or socks. It was an affordable way to wear a “name brand”. Now it’s a little different, they are trying to up their image by getting the likes of John Mayer and Sarah Jessica Parker to model for them and in doing so have cut out some of us upper lower class and lower middle class folks from being able to afford them. I went to their web site and here’s what I observed. Everything was very classic, grays, whites, and black lettering with clean lines. Most of the models were white they were all extremely thin and tall and they all gave me the impression of not being wealthy per say but definitely not broke. A quote I saw, “Our design collection is relevant in many different contexts, yet always true to the Gap Brand Essence” made me think they are trying to target scholarly people, those who have an education. So basically what they are promising is that they will keep up with the trends but you will always be able to find clean and classy lines there, not to mention other people just like you will all be wearing the exact same thing.

www.gap.com

HW 3: Who Critiques Who?

In discussions of Blog How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by, David Kline and Dan Burstein one controversial issue has been blogs and their effect on media and politics. On the one hand some people say that nobody reads blogs and therefore they have no effect. On the other hand Kline and Burstein among others argue that bloggers are transforming the political arena and are giving everyone a voice. In my opinion it used to be the media’s job to critique society, especially politics and the government. They haven’t been able to do their job successfully for a long time now. Most will claim to be non partisan (Fox News) but everyone knows they are conservative. There are complaints that bloggers will criticize the media for how they do their job and the media responds by saying that they should give it a try and see how easy it is. That isn’t the bloggers job though, just like it used to be the media’s job to critique the government, now it is the bloggers job to critique the media!

HW 2: Will Blogs Have Us Losing Face Time?

In reading David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I was struck by the second observation they made at the end of the introduction. Burstein says, “Blogs are particularly interesting because they marry so much personality and attitude with this complex mix of software technologies.” He is saying that we do not have to fear of losing social interaction because we can unite and use the blogs for public discussion. In learning about blogs I was concerned about this topic. I thought that with the technology boom we are experiencing that the personal connections we have might be lost in favor of faceless conversations on the web. He is saying that the technology boom is happening, basically whether we like it or not and blogs might be the way to gain control back. If we can use this to our advantage we could actually have more power in the political and governmental fields than ever before. I like that there is more hope now for us to voice our opinions freely and without, “having to own a press”.