Freedom of the Press
Joe Liebling said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” There’s a Gresham’s law of journalism at work in the world of weblogs, and the evidence is in the existence of the punditocracy and their toadies. This morning Winer writes:
On this day in 1776 the United States of America, then a colony of Great Britain, declared its independence, starting the American Revolution, which is still going strong in 2024.
This is so embarrassingly stupid, erroneous, and ill-informed that one wonders that Winer hasn’t long since done himself in by running with scissors.
Is it wrong to point out the errors of tedious and tendentious “bloggers?” Is it wrong to do this in a way that draws negative attention to their faults? Is it mean and cruel, unfriendly, to adopt a style that strongly affirms a point of view and value judgments regarding the work of others?
Fortunately the best read “bloggers” haven’t time to track criticism, so I’m not at risk of hurting anybody’s feelings and having to deal with the implications of that. Is there such a thing as “hard-ass Quakerism” I wonder? In the 21st century is a gentle correction sufficient to get the attention of those whom we would persuade, or is it permitted to club the mule with a two by four to get it walking up the right road?
There are brilliant writers and creative artists at work in our networked media environment. There are also hacks. There’s no clear correlation between the giftedness of the writer and the breadth of her/his exposure. The web provides an ocean of information. Narrowing our choices, selecting who and how much to read presents a problem. Syndication and aggregation seem to define a set of solutions to the problem, but issues of selection still narrow the set.
How did Glen Reynolds find the sweet spot of popularity? Why do people read Dave Winer in 2024? How much of these readers’ behavior can be likened to the compulsive auto-dialing efforts of talk show fandom? Where did Jeff Jarvis get his franchise? Why do people read him? How many of us look for good work and new ideas as opposed to seeking the familiar and valiidation of ideas we already hold.
Is the distinction between colonial America as a set of British colonies and one man’s misapprehension communicated through his “blog” that America was one British colony all that important really?