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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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A new refrain: “Where were the bloggers?”

A mythology is growing around instances in which bloggers have jumped on a story resulting in some kind of consequence. Trent Lott stepped down. Dan Rather resigned and other CBS staffers suffered. The manufacturer of a bicycle lock had to deal with the lock’s flaws.

Now, it seems, bloggers are expected to take the lead—or at least participate with great zest—in any number of issues. We saw this recently when Jay Rosen cried, “Where are the PR bloggers?” following the revelation that Ketchum, representing the US Department of Education, had paid pundit Armstrong Williams to publicly support the administration’s education policy.

In today’s Denver Post, there’s another example. Columnist Fred Brown wonders where the bloggers were in condemning the outrageous writings of Professor Ward Churchill, former chair of the University of Colorado’s Ethics Studies Department. There are calls for the firing of the tenured professor, who has stated repeatedly that (and I’m paraphrasing here) the US got what it deserved on September 11. Brown notes that Churchill first posted his contemptuous essay on September 12, 2001, but that it has only recently become an issue.

So why wasn’t this an issue before? Where were the bloggers, so vaunted of late? Bloggers on the political right called out Dan Rather within hours after his flawed report on President Bush’s National Guard service. Where was the Internet outrage against this academic extremist?

The blogosphere hasn’t been around long enough to study the reasons why some stories get traction and others don’t. One thing we do know, though, is that there is no central organizing force that puts out the word: “All right, everybody, let’s latch onto this issue.”

I also know that anybody who expects me to write about what they want me to write about will most often be sorely disappointed. Still, it seems that “Where were the bloggers?” is going to be a refrain we’ll be hearing a lot.

Comments
  • 1.Of course there's no one central organizing force in THE MEDIA that tells everybody to latch onto this issue or that. Rather, there are many central organizing forces.

    It appears the bloggers are starting to get what the media has gotten lately: Blamed for everything they don't cover, taken for granted for what they do cover.

    I've always thought the U.S. could benefit from a month-long general strike by journalists. One month of NO information--or only scattershot stuff from bloggers and Geraldo Rivera--might remind Americans that "the media" does serve a social purpose.

    David Murray | February 2005 | Chicago

  • 2.No, there's no organizing source for journalists, but they all get the same AP feeds (and many share the same syndicate feeds), they all operate under the same principles that define "news," and they are all obligated to cover the news. Bloggers write about what they want to write about, when they want to write about it. Apples and oranges.

    Shel Holtz | February 2005

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