Bloggers have arrived. They are gaining credibility and attracting ire. Clearly, they are changing the journalistic, political and electoral landscape.
Editor and Publisher reports that "bloggers making Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the CIA will likely get them processed for free under new rules that broaden the definition of who is part of the 'news media.'"
All democratic presidential candidates will make appearances at the Yearly Kos Conference, for liberal and antiwar bloggers, in Chicago this weekend.
Monday, conservative talker, Bill O'Reilly blasted the Daily Kos as a hate site on par with the Klan in an effort to discourage dems from attending the Chicago conference.
Michigan has a diverse and thriving political blogosphere. Consider this an introductory visitors' guide to the virtual landscape.
Liberal Community Sites
Michigan Liberal, the foremost liberal social blog with a relatively open culture. While open to anyone who espouses liberal/progressive values, many participants are democrats.
Blogging for Michigan, a relatively new site, is a "managed progressive community" providing news and commentary, while aiming for high standards of citizen journalism. This isn't a progressive soap box. Moderators expect writers to do some leg work in crafting posts.
Conservative
Michigan GOP (That's Saul, folks!) While the name is whimsical and inviting, reader comments are not allowed. Saul Anuzis, state party chair, drafts the daily posts. Other bloggers listed as contributors include Michigan Republican Party staff--Jeff Timmer, Sarah Anderson, and Rob Macomber. Based on statistics from BlogNetNews/Michigan, some of the daily posts get a lot of external links.
Republican Michigander, based in Livingston County, is the work of two writers. Although identifying as republican, comments are welcomed without restriction and some interesting dialog can result. Republican Michigander's tone tends toward pragmatism and reasonableness with a clear point of view.
Media Critique
While media critique is central to blog culture, some blogs devote themselves to exposing skewed or inaccurate reporting, or underreported issues in the public interest.
Media Mouse, based in Grand Rapids, "is an independent media group that formed in 1999 in response to the corporate media's unwillingness to cover movements for social change and a recognition of the need for more independent perspectives in Grand Rapids."
Comprehensive Directory
Absolute Michigan's Michigan Blog has an extensive list of all sorts of blogs based in Michigan. You could spend hours exploring.
Issue Oriented
These run the gamut and tend to be hosted by individuals and nonprofit organizations with an interest in specific policy and political outcomes. Here is a small sample.
Right to Life of Michigan's Blog
Republic of M, Gay Michigan
Great Lakes Guy
Michigan Nonprofit Association's Blog
AutoblogGreen
Michigan Library Consortium Blog
As you travel, be sure to explore the blogrolls in the sidebars. You'll be amazed what's out there. You might even want to start your own blog. Enjoy your journey!
Thursday, August 2, 2007
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6 comments:
I love how you spin the fact that ML is "open" and suggest that Saul's blog is not because it doesn't have comments (having been in the blogosphere since 97, no comment blogs have an obvious place).
Of course, ML is not open and doesn't not allow comments from those it arbitrarily disagrees with. BFM's policy expressly prohibits contrary viewpoints - even ones critical of it in its attempt to the "meet quality citizen journalism" standards (that is, if you're considered conservative by the moderators even if your comment is non-political and targeted toward the quality of journalism, you will be censored).
While both blogs have the right to do so - they both censor. Saul doesn't censor - he simply doesn't provide a platform at all (and monitoring a blog is a very difficult thing). His blog is viewpoint neutral - liberals can't criticize him, but conservatives can't praise him. The other blogs discriminate against viewpoints they dislike - the hallmark of censorship. And while within their rights since the speech is privately financed - not in the spirit of "progressive".
I find it interesting that you excluded Michigan's largest conservative blog measured by audience (RightMichigan) - although it is new, my own hit logs (which are deceptive because I get several times as many RSS/XML hits as I do measurable hits) from referrers suggest it is crushing Saul (naturally, because it allows commentary). Hit quantity doesn't tell the whole story though - I look for quality hits on my own site, and its hard to judge other sites without webmaster-level data.
Thank you for reading. I didn't intentionally exclude RightMichigan any more than I excluded lots of other blogs. I was aiming for an introductory and brief overview. You are right that BFM has a restrictive editorial policy by design. As for ML, I said "relatively" open.
What I have noticed is that most blogs have a perspective. And that a lot of blogs are preaching to their respective choirs or trying to mobilize support for their specific political agenda.
An interesting concept that would make for a good blog is transpartisanship, which acknowledges the validity of truths across a range of political perspectives and seeks to synthesize them into an inclusive, pragmatic mode beyond typical political dualities. That's the kind of blog I'd really enjoy.
Celeste, thanks for the post, it's a nice intro.
I would like to plug the Detroit News political blog. It's a great group blog.
On BFM's policy ... I'd agree with Chet that we censor out conservative opinions, and Chet was subjected to that policy when he commented, most likely because he is known to support the conservative point of view.
While his particular comment was probably not disruptive in any way (I didn't see it), BFM is leery of the 'slippery slope' ... if we allow Chet, we have to allow the John Galts of the world.
And John Galt's behavior on BFM was trollish and just plain weird with the personal dig aimed at me. He was just there to lash out at us. (me in particular) It makes it difficult to get the BFM policy relaxed when people like Galt are out there reinforcing the reasoning behind the policy. Rather than evaluate each comment as it comes, BFM simply bans it all.
Also I'd add that disagreement is welcome at BFM, but only within the progressive framework. As you can see on Michigan Liberal, there is plenty of disagreement to be had within the progressive framework.
I would also point out that the right-wing punishes people who have different views. They tend to allow the speech, but then do harm to the person who did the speaking, by publishing their personal details on the web, slandering their character, accusing them of being terrorists, questioning their ethics, patriotism, etc. Rather than censor speech, they intimidate or hurt the speaker so much that people 'choose' not to speak. And then they say "at least we didn't censor you, that's your choice." Not speaking specifically to any Michigan blog, it just characterizes the kind of thing you see on the right. I only point it out because of Chet's comments on censorship.
Saul's blog is not a very good blog, not because he doesn't allow comments (he'd get mired down with managing that) but because he copies so many articles from other sources. I didn't count his posts, but I would guess a good 70%-80% of his content is copied straight from other sources in his "articles of interest" section. To his credit, he at least started to publish excerpts and link out, rather than just copy & paste the entire article like he used to. However he is probably still violating copyright by not meeting the fair use exception, and he is definitely spamming search engines by duplicating content like that.
I see Chet is still mad about being banned from Michigan Liberal.
In turn, I had to ban Chet from my personal blog because he kept complaining about it in threads where it wasn't an appropriate topic of conversation.
Hey, don't forget LivingBlue, the Livingston County liberal blog site. We're at:
http://livcodemocrats.blogspot.com/
so come check us out.
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