Blogging for Change

John Aravosis came out last night.

            The gay rights activist and political consultant has been open about his sexuality for years. But at a recent dinner in his DC neighborhood, the maintainer of Americablog.com had to confess: He was a blogger.

            "It was weird. I felt like I had to justify myself," he reported on the blog afterward. "And it clearly was the first time anybody had told this guy that they blogged for a living."

Blogs – constantly-updated online news and commentary sites – have become news sources for millions of Americans. But their often abrasive political slants and lack of oversight long kept them from being considered "real" news sources.

However, the mainstream media, or "MSM" in blog-speak, is starting to accept blogs as both newsmakers and news partners. MSNBC recently bought a spate of ad space on left-leaning blogs. Time and Newsweek feature short roundups of blogs each week – Time even named a Blog of the Year last year. Even NBC anchor Brian Williams started a blog this year.

"Strengthening the public discourse … is the common ground shared by professional journalists, bloggers, Wikipedians and others involved in the creation of grassroots media," concluded a joint Harvard-American Library Association conference in January 2005.

The concern of Americablog's Aravosis over his profession makes sense, however. Despite blogs' growing importance in developing news stories, their stark political nature makes journalists uncomfortable.

Or, as Stephen Colbert put it on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" last spring: "They have no credibility. All they have are facts."

This discomfort, however, may be linked to the fact that blogs often fact-check stories in the media. It was the right-wing blog Powerline that caused resignations at CBS over its piece on President Bush's time in the National Guard before the 2004 election. Many bloggers on the left were offended that they were left off of Bill O'Reilly's McCarthyesque list of "media operations that traffic in defamation" – so far, the list includes only The New York Times, MSNBC, and The St. Petersburg Times. In fairness to blogs, though, these organizations are in the hot seat because, as O'Reilly put it, they "regularly helped distribute defamation and false information supplied by far left websites."

Left-wing blogs have made something of a habit of trashing and fact-checking O'Reilly, and journalists have followed their lead. On Dec. 1, Keith Olbermann named O'Reilly the third-worst, second-worst, and "Worst Person in the World" during a segment of "Countdown."

O'Reilly had been accusing liberals of fighting a war on Christmas, trying among other things to replace "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays." Olbermann pulled up a picture from Fox's online store, complete with "holiday ornaments." The shot, along with the story of Fox's political correctness, came from Media Matters, a progressive media watchdog blog.

Bloggers can also make news themselves. In February, blogs on the left found evidence that Jeff Gannon, a White House correspondent for a right-wing news site, had insider information on the then-developing Valerie Plame story. (Plame, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, was outed as a CIA operative by still-unknown sources inside the White House to smear Wilson.) Gannon also owned the website hotmilitarystud.com and had profiles on several gay escort sites.

After a brief media storm, in which Gannon talked to Wolf Blitzer on CNN and started his own blog to counter the growing online discussion about him, he got a job as a columnist for the Washington Blade, where he lashed out at the blogs that gathered his life story, particularly Americablog's Aravosis.

Big blogs, big money?

Blogs started as personal, online journals for anyone with an Internet connection (basic knowledge of English not necessary). But thanks to a politically divided nation and the development of accurate search technology, some blogs quickly shot up as must-reads.

A blog ecosystem, created by "NZ Bear" at truthlaidbear.com, shows that a handful of blogs across the political spectrum are the most read. The top blogs, called "Higher Beings" in the rankings, include Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit, Markos Moulitsas' Daily Kos, and Joshua Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

These major blogs form a sort of collective consciousness, according to a July 2004 paper (warning: PDF) by Daniel Drezner from the University of Chicago and Henry Farrell from George Washington University. Since writing is plentiful but readers are scarce, blogs that get established as credible, such as Instapundit and Daily Kos, stay widely-read.

This automatic, almost instinctual trust of "big-name" blogs with large readerships and active message boards helps form like-minded communities online. Like virtual MeetUps, blog readers can find like-minded people without having to do more than click a mouse.

The burgeoning readerships of big blogs also led to the refining of blog advertising. Since most of the top bloggers make at least some money off of blogging, frequent pleas for donations were common on early blogs. But with the development of BlogAds and Google Ads, advertisers are able to tailor their messages to readers of specific blogs.

Rather than a random collection of sponsored political sites, ads on blogs now often give readers chances to participate in politics. Political candidates seek donations on the edges of sites such as Atrios and Talking Points Memo, especially in the wake of the Democratic National Committee's continued fundraising success. Howard Dean kept his blog after becoming head of the DNC and still uses it to raise money and announce online campaigns.

Bloggers' ability to raise and make money comes at a time when the regular media is facing financial crises. Many newspapers are laying off reporters and shrinking their bureaus, particularly international ones, if not shutting them down entirely. Newspaper circulation is down, and most organizations have not figured out how to make money online. The much-touted New York Times Select section, a pay-to-read invention that includes the paper's editorials, has not done as well as expected.

If news organizations cannot make money on the Internet, they can at least provoke outrage. The Washington Post recently sparked a frenzy when it discussed internal problems surrounding Dan Froomkin's column.

"For all its interesting and useful features, some things I don't like about the on-line crankosphere are its frequent humorlessness and tendency to blow issues way out of proportion," Washington Post politics editor John Harris said in an online chat with readers.

Political divide

As information sources continue to spring up, political blogs have become the Wikipedia to the mainstream media's Encyclopedia Brittanica – or, as they might put it, the Groucho Marx to the MSM's Harpo. Besides the commentary that makes them interesting, blogs have established themselves as a check on the modern media, as well as a political force in their own right. This is why some journalists see blogs as political tools rather than legitimate media sources – major blogs never claim to be "fair and balanced."

Like the yellow journalism of the nineteenth century, blogs make no bones about their political leanings.

During the 2004 election, sites such as Blogs for Bush reported the news with an eye for garnering votes. Presidential candidate Howard Dean raised millions with his blog, combining official campaign news with general political goings-on. By keeping opinion and news together, blogs gain readers (and traffic) but lose any sense of objectivity.

Yet it is blogs' partisanship that keeps them interesting to readers.

"We don't just report the news and analyze it," Aravosis wrote. "We're here to make the world a better place."