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The Blog that Ate Real Journalism

James Joyner | Thursday, May 12, 2005

Cal Thomas believes the Huffington Post demonstrates the superiority of blogs over “real journalism.”

The Huffington Post, an Internet blog that debuted May 9 after a campaign that would have delighted P.T. Barnum, makes me nostalgic for the good old days of journalism.

It isn’t that its founder, Arianna Huffington (who named it for herself in true Hollywood “enough about me, not what do YOU think about me” fashion) doesn’t have every right to join the increasingly clogged blog superhighway. Rather, this blog has an agenda and speaks mostly to people who already believe what most of its writers say.

Increasingly, we are surrounded by people who write and speak to a single constituency – their own. The left is now trying to gin-up the same level of anger the right has used to propel itself into political power and media heaven by its dominance of talk radio and much of cable TV. It is failing, though, because the left continues to have numerous mainstream outlets for its ideas. The left’s problem is that people are familiar with those ideas and they are rejecting them.

Isn’t that true of opinion journalists–like Mr. Thomas–as well? Surely, most people who read Townhall.com are fellow conservatives.

I would also note that “Internet blog” is redundant. “Blog” is a shortened form of “Web log.” A blog is, by definition, on the Internet.

Update:
Steven Taylor has similar, but longer, thoughts on the matter.
John Hawkins thinks Thomas is a flip-flopper.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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