The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey on blogging, published July 19, 2006 contains lots of good data on who all of those bloggers are. The survey contains lots of statistics, charts and commentary. Here's the summary. The Pew Internet Project blogger survey finds that the American blogosphere is…
Pouring time into this blog has been deeply satisfying to me. But what is this accomplishing, I sometimes wonder?
After all, there are already numerous writers out there. Technorati.com indicates that it is now tracking 48.5 million sites and 2.7 billion links. Plus, there are numerous traditional sources of information (books, magazines, movies, television) available to anyone who is interested.
I don’t have any illusions about my alleged importance. As Charles De Gaulle famously said, “The cemetery is full of indispensable people.” Nonetheless, I joined the Blogosphere to have a voice and to hopefully present a meaningfully unique voice. This blog is an experiment that will always be provisional and evolving.
This blog grew out of an email relationship between a fellow who lives in Madison (he goes by the name of Grumpypilgrim on this blog) and me. I met “Grumpy” when I provided legal services for a company for whom Grumpy worked. We had emailed our rants and observations back and forth for more than a year. Eventually, I suggested that we exchange our ideas in a public way, in case anyone else might be interested.
Two months later, dangerousintersection.org was designed by Nick Smith of nicksmithdesign.com. I chose the name after looking at a big yellow “Dangerous Intersection” sign I had in my office (I had it around as a novelty) and after considering how that name might generally fit an iconoclastic blog. I took the photo of the intersection used in the site’s logo. Nick made it …
Bill O’Reilly hates the blogosphere. He hates many things, of course, among them Pepsi, rapper Ludacris, a wide array of conventional media outlets, and even some of his own guests. But today I focus on an entire media outlet that O’Reilly labels as biased, lacking in evidence, and in large part sensationalized: political blogs.
Of course, O’Reilly doesn’t oppose online journalism on his own. Even more mainstream news anchors (if you can call Mr. O’Reilly a news anchor) tend to scoff and roll their eyes at the notion of “the blogosphere” or the opinions expressed over the internet. O’Reilly has led the most outspoken movement against internet editorialism, though. In June of 2003, Bill had this to say about bloggers:
“Nearly everyday, there’s something written on the Internet about me that’s flat out untrue…the reason these net people get away with all kinds of stuff is that they work for no one. They put stuff up with no restraints. This, of course, is dangerous…”
By July of 2005, the “blogosphere” had become a common slang term for the mainstream news media, and became the focus of one episode of O’Reilly’s Factor program:
“Personal attacks lodged through the internet! How are so-called “Web logs” being used as ideological weapons? And who’s behind the smear campaigns? We’ll have a No Spin look at a dangerous new weapon in the culture wars!”
But as “dangerous” as these “weapons in the culture wars” may seem to some, online outlets such as …
Here's a recent example of the effective use of sharp-edged rebuttal (see the comments) to puncture bloated and unthinking terror-mongering (see the post). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-smerconish/play-the-tape_b_19449.html The point of these comments is that two wrongs don't make a right. The post-writer, a good example of tens of millions of like-minded others, is apparently oblivious. …