Big news yesterday in the blogosphere: associate editor and blogger for the American Prospect, Ezra Klein, officially made the switch to the Washington Post. He will of course still be blogging at WaPo, so it's not quite as dramatic a shift as 29-year-old Ross Douthat's jump from a similar dual post at the Atlantic to the op-ed page of the New York Times. Ezra is the second TAP editor/blogger to join the Post in as many years, following Garance Franke-Ruta, who left TAP to cover the 2008 campaign.
Fans of upstart young bloggers like Ezra (25) see this as a sign that WaPo and other traditional media outlets are recognizing the value of incorporating the type of coverage and analysis you see at sites such as TAP and TPM. The NYT seems to be recognizing this value as well, though they appear less inclined to pay for it than the Post does.
Of course, simply providing hip and dynamic online content doesn't solve the problem of how to get paid for that content, or how to replace advertising dollars lost to craigslist and websites of similar ilk. So it won't single-handedly revive a financially decrepit industry (darn!). It does address another concern, however-- when articles lean too heavily toward "just the facts, ma'am", and editorials devolve into party talking points or opportunities for unreflective snark and complaint, blogs can provide a flexible medium for a middle ground between the two, to supplement -- though not supplant -- the more traditional article/editorial dichotomy.
Here's an example: Klein's specialty is health care policy. A weekly column is not a good medium for giving sophisticated, nuanced accounts of the state of health care reform. And while plain ol' articles on important events are good, you aren't really allowed to add context like, "Ben Nelson seems to understand little about what a public option for health care would entail other than the fact that he is opposed to any iteration of the idea" when you are reporting news. Enter the blog.
Most blogs acknowledge an ideological tilt up front, be it toward progressivism (Klein, Yglesias, TPM), conservatism (Red State, The Corner), or sensationalism (POLITICO!, Drudge Report!). But this doesn't stop the best blogs from doing what they can to empirically back up their assertions -- and there is an interactive community of peers and readers to call them out when they don't. In fact, Klein was one of the many bloggers to take issue with the stubborn inaccuracies in a couple climate change columns by his soon-to-be-colleague, George Will.
The Washington Post would do well to look for more Ezra Kleins and fewer George Wills. That's change we can believe in.
6 years ago
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And less Richard Cohens, Charles Krauthammers and consistently lousy former NYT columnists. But maybe I just have it in for conservative columnists.
ReplyDeleteI agree that, in the short term, it is unfortunate Klein doesn't get a spot in the regular pages. In the long term, however, everyone is going to get all their news online. So the web is the forward-looking--progressive?--place to be. (Paying for it, as you say, is a whole different story.)
You note correctly that the best blogs do "what they can" to prove their points. But I think you could go even farther. The very nature of the web FORCES blogs to get empirical if they want legitimacy. (Name a blog that links as little as, say, one of Maureen Dowd's online columns.) It is one of the great undermentioned strengths of blogs.