The Blog Establishment

Based on research (and photo documentation) from NY Magazine, we now have a definitive portrait of what the publication calls the "Blog Establishment."

(Pictured:  Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo. Jessica Coen and Jesse Oxfeld/Gawker.)

(hat tip: Sour Duck)

(images: Phillip Toldenado. February 20, 2006. New York Magazine. newyorkmetro.com)

Comments

[jonst]

I've been handicapping what the over/under would be on how many months it would take 'them' to start coming after the blogs. The David Brooks/WAPO attacks signaled it has begun. The GOP Fog machine/Multi-National Media companies can't tolerate this rival. And its not that I overestimate the importance of the blogs. Rather, its I never underestimate the determination of the 'other side' to become the sole vehicle for 'acceptable' discourse

"first that ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" Gandhi. We'll, that's optimistic anywy. Hold on...because we will soon be moving out of the "laugh at you" stage to the "fight you" one.

[marysz]

It's magazines like New York that are the most vulnerable to loosing readers to blogs. Readers can get local entertainment listings online and the celebrity gossip is fresher when it comes from bloggers. The sour grapes attitude of the article is understandable. The bloggers are photographed as emerging from a murky darkness--almost as if they're creatures from the deep. And that's how they look to traditional media. the mainline media is used to ruling the information roost. They see blogs as a slap in the face.

[Keir]

Earth to the Right Wing: blogging is the perfect solution to the threat of informed young people with gobs of free time and an ounce of social conscience doing anything but purchasing Macintosh computers and pretending to be activists. (Hey, myself included.) Keep 'em blogging 'cause it keeps 'em off the streets.

[ummabdulla]

Maybe I'll go back later and read more of that article, but it's hard for me to get interested in an article that starts off talking about a college student who's obsessed with who (whom?) Paris Hilton is sleeping with... so he starts a blog and gets "only" a few hundred visitors a day - a few hundred visitors a day came just to read that?!?

Keir's blog mentions Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death", which I should read again. I'm embarassed that I actually know things like Britney Spears drove with her baby in her lap, or Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crowe broke up, but I can't help it because I see it in the headlines when I go to Yahoo.com or even the BBC.

Anyway, I assume the rest of the article covers some blogs with more substance. I think it's great that people with something important to say can compete with the big names in the media. Just one example that comes to mind: Juan Cole is about a million times better than that idiot (sorry, I was trying to think of a nicer word, but...) Thomas Friedman, so the more people that have access to him, the better.

[Hmmm]

I don't find this to be as interesting as it could be. I see bloggers as part of the same group as the talking heads and opinion columnists. They just haven't been quite as successful. As they succeed further they seem to bridge themselves into punditry.

As for the photos...all I can say is did the photographer say "ok, everyone, look smug and condescending" or what?

I'd find a profile of who comments at blogs and what kind of content the comments have to be much more interesting. Not meant as any offense to Bag or bloggers but I think the psychological study of comments would be fascinating!

[Spider Jerusalem]

In regards to comment #9; HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! All too true, it seems. Bloggers are thier own form of poloticians, aren't they?

[ummabdulla]

I looked at their list of top 50 blogs, and I guess I'm pretty out of touch with the blogosphere. There is one I go to pretty often (Huffington Post), another one or two that I've seen (like Daily KOS), a few that I've heard of but have no desire to read (like Litle Green Footballs and Michelle Malkin), and then a whole bunch that I've never heard of. Most of them aren't my kind of blogs, and if those pictures of the bloggers are any indication of what the people are really like, I can see why.

[theleftknew]

I must say their original photo is quiet funny, gonna have to take it.

[Cactus]

The blogosphere is something unknown, dark and writhing under the MSM radar. But every once in a while, more often now, it reaches up and slaps 'em in the face. Kinda like little rugrats at parent's party walking right up to the biggest bore and announcing 'you're silly.' Unfortunately the boring MSM has no sense of humor but does have the tools and money to destroy the competition. And they will. Remember when they thought blogs were cute and interesting? Oh, back when they were all on the right? Now that progressives have a voice, they are all upset at the unreliability (read: uncontrolability) of it all.

It all reminds me of the music scene in the '60's. Building on the base of southern black music and Elvis, the folkies broadened the scene. Then various forms of rock stood on their shoulders and it was wild and free and uncontrollable. But not for long. Soon the "industry" was picking canned music for effect and big bucks, programming to target audience and, IMHO, it became a dead medium.

All the images have black background, harsh spot-light lighting w/little fill. The subjects are all looking sideways (slightly sinister?) and somewhat down (haughty?). The color is so minimal they are almost black & white. Not to repeat, but it's all just too obvious.

Nothing worthwhile lasts forever in a corpratocracy.

[futurebird]

I don't think that blogs are revolutionary. It's another way of getting ideas out, compare to the society of letters, ham radio and a community bulletin board or call board at a theatre. I guess there are still a lot of old fogies out there who have not experienced just how ordinary the internet really is. And, of course, it can be subject to the same corporate pressures as every other means of communicating.

What matters are the people and the ideas-- not the format. Come on people it's been 10 years since this stuff came on the scene! Well, I guess it's taking a mass audience these days-- hence the info on pop stars and other mass culture crap.

Not that it was any better when it was all computer nerds and their sexually frustrated teenage male crap...

[futurebird]

Also NY Magazine is a blog. It's online, updated... whatever. They have some nerve.

[Hmmm]

One thing I didn't notice before was of whom the photos are. The second two I'm still unfamiliar with. The first is Josh Marshall. It doesn't look at al like I see him everyday at his site. His picture at talkingpointsmemo looks like someone down to earth, hardworking and honest. Not an ounce of the smug that he somehow exudes in the portrait of him here? How can that be?

[readytoblowagasket]

I haven't read this article yet, because New York magazine redesigned their website and my computer can't display their online content anymore. But I know just by looking at this photo shoot that I'm going to hate this piece. The magazine chose to homogenize the bloggers (if you know one blogger, you know them all), and I can't believe that any of them agreed to have their photos taken. (Notice how they are all lit as if by a computer monitor — wow, how interesting.) Their 15 minutes of fame just expired. They may soon become the next Jay McInerneys: potential talent and intellect wasted by self-infatuation.

In the meantime, I'm going to respectfully disagree with you, futurebird — blogs are revolutionary because they are essentially rebellious. Also, the format *does* matter: it grows organically out of the technology, not just because of the people and their ideas. Yes, there is lots of ordinary stuff on the Internet; there's also lots of outrageous, challenging, disturbing, funny, creative, smart, interactive, and inscrutable stuff too. In some significant ways, blogging is a new art form. You may be comfortable with the Internet, but blogging exists because the traditional art forms are limiting, structured, controlled, and elitist. If blogs do become too corporate and homogenized, the creative/radical types will move on to a new form.

[futurebird]

there's also lots of outrageous, challenging, disturbing, funny, creative, smart, interactive, and inscrutable stuff too

I find most of this stuff offline. Now and then I see it online too--

In some significant ways, blogging is a new art form.

Maybe. Yes I can see this--

blogging exists because the traditional art forms are limiting, structured, controlled, and elitist

I don't think any art form is limiting. Even the oldest and most structured forms can hold explosive ideas.

I think the internet is deceptive. It seems as if one can reach a great number of people and really start something-- but, in fact, the internet has proven to be a poor tool thus far when it comes to organizing people to really do things with their hand in the real world. The conversations online never end-- ideas are exchanged, but, it is just as hard to organize a group of people to meet and work together in "meatspace" with flyers and handbills as it is online. I also think it's not so great to interact with people 100s of miles away when I don't even know the name of the guy in the apartment next door.

The internet isn't really human interaction-- but an abstraction of it-- something less rich that will do under certain circumstances--- oh but given the choice...

So I feel the net result is nothing-- a bit more communication a bit more alienation-- but nothing of the earth shattering significance some seem to report.

I can share my ideas and art without a computer... copy machine or even ink.

The only thing required is another open mind.

[readytoblowagasket]

futurebird said: "I don't think any art form is limiting."

Easy to say with the benefit of centuries of art behind you. All art forms are limiting until the limits are altered and something new is created. The history of art demonstrates that artists THEMSELVES have felt constrained by limitations. If there weren't limitations, there wouldn't be entire movements (and countermovements).

futurebird said: "I think the internet is deceptive. It seems as if one can reach a great number of people and really start something-- but, in fact, the internet has proven to be a poor tool thus far when it comes to organizing people to really do things with their hand in the real world."

I guess you've forgotten about the Howard Dean 2004 presidential campaign.
From Wikipedia:
"Dean's presidential campaign was remarkable at the time for its extensive use of the Internet to reach out to its supporters. The candidate's staff, and occasionally even the candidate, frequently 'blogged' while on the campaign trail and even sought advice on important campaign-related decisions -- in at least two instances even making decisions through online polls of supporters. By soliciting contributions online, the campaign shattered previous fundraising records for the Democratic presidential primary. Dean has been credited with being the first national candidate to play to the strengths of the Internet, in particular by engaging the American public directly in the political process. His Internet success is often attributed to campaign manager Joe Trippi."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean

futurebird said: "The internet isn't really human interaction-- but an abstraction of it-- something less rich that will do under certain circumstances . . ."

I'm trying to figure out how reading a book, listening to a CD, watching a movie, or looking at art on a wall in a museum is a *less abstract* form of human interaction than blogging on the Internet. I don't want to get sidetracked by a debate about aesthetics (because aesthetics isn't my point, although it may be yours), but I do know that traditional art forms are not necessarily more valid (or as you say, "richer") forms of expression. You may prefer traditional forms to what you've seen on the Internet, but it *doesn't follow* that your preferences are therefore richer.

futurebird said: "So I feel the net result is nothing-- a bit more communication a bit more alienation-- but nothing of the earth shattering significance some seem to report."

People have made such pronouncements about art for centuries, and artists have ignored them — take the Impressionist painters, for example. I don't want to equate blogging and painting, but it's a closer equation than comparing blogging and assembly-line work (which also creates an end-product).

futurebird said: "The only thing required is another open mind."

If that's not an elitist comment, I don't know what is.

[Hmmm]

gasket..."If there weren't limitations, there wouldn't be entire movements (and countermovements)[in art]." These movements are more about schools of thought and not the media (oil paint, lithography, etc.) they use. It could be argued that these movements revealed the self limitation artist imposed on themselves and strengthens what this future person was saying. Just to say that there are limitations on everything is, in this discussion, simply contrarian, not enlightening.

As far as interaction goes I'd focus on limitations in communication. Talking on the phone is more limited than talking face to face. You eliminate body language. I'd say that communicating on the internet (or through any written word) is more limiting than on the phone because we don't have the benefit of tone of voice.

INTERNET CONFUSION IS EASY. Was I just yelling at you? Do I even know caps means yelling? Also, I can be cruel to you in a way I might not if I were face to face with you. It is infinitely easier to have relationships of choice over the internet than to work together with a neighbor you are stuck with.

As far as blogs and how they are pictured (double meaning there), whether fair or unfair criticism, bloggers will defend themselves. That is human nature. My opinion is that blogs are not as marginal as the article suggests and no where as important as the bloggers assert.

To me the part of the article that is most damaging to blogs is the discussion of the money that is being made. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea that one moneymaking venture is going to be more honest with me than another because one is a less traditional medium than the others. Both have self interest and to say it is not true is disingenuous.

[futurebird]

guess you've forgotten about the Howard Dean 2004 presidential campaign.

No, that is what I was thinking of. I mean, he's not in office, not even Kerry is there.

I'm trying to figure out how reading a book, listening to a CD, watching a movie, or looking at art on a wall in a museum is a *less abstract* form of human interaction than blogging on the Internet.

I don't think I said a book was "less abstract" -- I am comparing it to face to face local interaction. I mean. I don't even know where you are--

I'm trying to decide if I resent being called an elitist-- I guess I don't understand your logic there. How is seeking others who are similarly open minded elitist?

[futurebird]

As far as blogs and how they are pictured (double meaning there), whether fair or unfair criticism, bloggers will defend themselves. That is human nature. My opinion is that blogs are not as marginal as the article suggests and no where as important as the bloggers assert.

I totally agree.

I'm not bothered by the money issue-- but I am bothered by the idea that there is a difference between New York Online and a blog. It's the same basic idea, but they are using their "legitimate" forum to talk about these "marginal" forums. When, in fact, they are all the same...

[readytoblowagasket]

Hmmm said: "These movements are more about schools of thought and not the media (oil paint, lithography, etc.) they use."

Actually, Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf, and John Cage (to name only three) all focused on their media in order express themselves in a new way. The notion of "schools of thought" comes from academia. I'm not being contrary at all, but I might have been more specific.

Another "limiting" effect imposed on art is societal: If you were a female artist or an artist of color, you would likely have a different take on artistic "self-limitation." Some societal limitations are quite vividly real, as we are witnessing with the Danish cartoon furor.

I look at lots of blogs (like I look at art and literature and music), not just the blogs I like, and I try not to make gross generalizations based on personal preferences, like I felt futurebird did. There's nothing wrong with having personal preferences, it is simply *inaccurate* to use them to make definitive statements about something you haven't explored thoroughly. You can prefer face-to-face interaction, for example, but it's not inherently better or worse than interaction on the Internet.

Again, leaving aesthetics out of it, I consider this comment thread an art form just as I would consider the AIDS quilt or Emily Dickinson's poems, only seven of which were published in her lifetime, art forms too.

[black dog barking]

The article's money numbers simply don't compute. Rates are quoted as high as $10 to $30 per thousand page views at Huffington Post, yet Audi pays $50,000 for 68 million page views, roughly $0.75 per thousand. (Seems like Huffington Post reader and Audi would be a pretty good consumer / producer matchup.) If Yahoo offers the same value as Audi gets for their $500,000 for one day at the top of the front page does Audi get 680 million views? One out of every nine people alive? Every connected user in the Americas, Europe, and non-China Asia?

Rather than comparing the aesthetics of different communication media look at the potential bandwidth: photography uses color, light, and stylized representation of shape to present ideas through our eyes, etc.

Using the internet, your web browser can present anything your computer can output including DVDs, music, paintings and photos, formal and informal text in near real time to virtually any location on the planet. If you've grown up with the Internet you might take it for granted but this is truly revolutionary. And barely tapped.

[readytoblowagasket]

black dog barking said: "Using the internet, your web browser can present anything your computer can output including DVDs, music, paintings and photos, formal and informal text in near real time to virtually any location on the planet. If you've grown up with the Internet you might take it for granted but this is truly revolutionary. And barely tapped."

Yes. This is exactly what I am referring to in my first comments.

When Patrick Fitzgerald gave his press conference last October indicting Scooter Libby, I listened to it live on NPR while simultaneously following the comment thread about it on Democratic Underground. Democratic Underground provided blow-by-blow updates for people who were stuck at work in their cubicles and couldn't watch the coverage on TV. Watching the comment thread in real time was an AMAZING experience. It was like a spontaneous happening. It was intimate and exciting and dramatic and poignant and funny. It was a group expression.

[futurebird]

I guess I need some examples of how blogs have had a significant impact on quality of life or the way people think to understand why it is so "powerful" or "significant."

That is what do blogs do that web-pages, listservs and email can't?

I've had a blog in one form or the other since 1997.

All that has happened is a larger number of people have figured out how to publish online because of better software and a larger online population.

So there is an explosion of content and readers.

But is it revolutionary? How can a far-flung band of people who don't even know each other's name have any real impact?

I was so excited when this all started-- we'll be amazing, I thought, I'll email my congress person! I'll network! I'll find other amazing artists to work with... No. None of this worked the way I had hoped. Online you feel as if you are a part of a massive movement no matter what you read or write. You have the comforting chatter of like minds. But it is so easy to forget that you are still in the minority-- we're divided into these self-affirming little sects each convinced of its own perfection.

--But I'll tell you what I do think is revolutionary: userbuilt encyclopedias. I hope they start mapping journals in to these things-- it gives a whole new meaning to peer review. I appreciate being able to look up theorems without going to the library-- and being able to find commentary on those theorems.

[black dog barking]

I guess I need some examples of how blogs have had a significant impact on quality of life or the way people think to understand why it is so "powerful" or "significant."

The article mentions Josh Marshall's coverage of Trent Lott's birthday toast to Strom Thurman. Lott was forced to step aside as Senate Majority Leader. Powerline arguably claims responsibility for the resignation of Dan Rather (citing the Texas Air National Guard documents). Another Josh Marshall citizen journalism project reported by Business Week Online is a big reason why Tom DeLay is no longer the House Majority Leader.

I don't think there's anything special about blogs over other forms of internet contact except for the tight feedback loop. Marshall's blog doesn't allow comments although he frequently cites reader email.

[Hmmm]

I can't get over the difference in appearance for Josh Marshall. I wish we could be looking at them (him) side by side. At Talking Points Memo he is looking you straight in the eye, at your level. In addition to the easy trust that picture offers he seems in his expression to have something important to say. Shift to the New York Mag. picture where the composition sends the emotional radar into condesention alert. Is the look meant to be tounge in cheek and I take it wrong? Why are you looking at me like that I ask? These are the emotions that I have drawn out. A midwesterner, perhaps I'm more prone to that. I hope not. I went to a big 10 school with many friends I made from both coasts. I've lived in the 2nd (3rd? Chicago?) biggest city in the US. I have to say that the photos are a succesful play on the idea that there is some anti heartland bias among gen x and younger folks from the coasts. I'm sure you can find snobs everywhere but these photos are meant to look like the King, Jack and Queen face cards in the suit of snob. Is it a parody? Is is an effort by NY Mag. to say young New Yorkers who blog aren't your kind of people middle America. See how the look at you? Plausable? Ridiculous?

[Cactus]

Futurebird, you sound like a young person (at least from my perspective). Possibly you are taking blogs/internet for granted. "I was so excited when this all started-- we'll be amazing, I thought, I'll email my congress person! I'll network! I'll find other amazing artists to work with... No. None of this worked the way I had hoped." Perhaps it is up to you to find a way to make that happen, maybe some thinking outside the box.

For old farts like me, who grew up BEFORE TV, the internet is truly remarkable. Yes, blogs are good and bad, but I concentrate on the good ones. Like the BAG. I can't have this sort of discussion with any of my friends; most are just not political, or well read, or artistic, etc. They have other qualities, such as honesty, sense of humor, etc. that have kept us friends even though they are now scattered all over the US and west to Japan. So the mix of opinions, experience, views, interests, etc., that I can read/participate in on this blog I cannot get anywhere else. I've tried. And I live in a large city.

In reality, in real time, people are just too busy with their lives and work and family to drive across town to discuss something with strangers. And what about people in small towns? Where do they go to discuss progressive politics and art/photography?

I would ask you not to be so judgmental about those of us who are involved with the blogosphere. Perhaps you are just in that too late/too soon age where you are too young to identify with us old folks who are truly amazed by all this, yet too old to identify with the five-year-olds who seem to have a keyboard growing out of their fingertips. You are obviously a talented, intelligent person and IMHO you will make your own break-thru, whether or not it involves the blogosphere.

Okay, I ranted.

[readytoblowagasket]

OK, I read the article (well, all but the last page) and I didn't hate it, but I'm not impressed. The article is much ado about the biggest blogs (currently), but it doesn't get beyond surface history and name-dropping, it doesn't get to the heart of what makes blogging unique (or "successful" in the first place), and it certainly doesn't give readers of blogs any credit for having anything beyond a pack mentality. It's a good primer on what will be ancient history come this time next year. I was glad to see that some "A-list" bloggers refused to be interviewed for the article.

To my initial critique of the photos I would add that since the article has no content, the photographer had nothing to work with except to try to make an interesting portrait concept using ordinary people (which I'm sure was a challenge). If you have an "empty" feeling after reading the piece, it's not you. If the pics leave you cold, it's not you. The comment thread here and The BAG's addition of orbiting observations are both more thought-provoking.

[Sour Duck]

Nice job on this - thanks for the hat-tip. The NY magazine cover is rich for mining as well - I did a short one at my blog, but nothing like what you do!

"it's hard for me to get interested in an article that starts off talking about a college student who's obsessed with who (whom?) Paris Hilton is sleeping with"

With you there!

[klevenstein]

Although it may seem to us that the web and blogging have been around forever, but with a longer perspective it is hopefully a bit early in the game to judge them against media and forms of expression that have been around for more than a century, or millennia in some cases.

As a boomer engineer, I was using an Internet browser daily by 1995, and I'd been regularly using email and the Arpanet since ten years before that. By 1997, I had started getting most of my information and commentary from remarkably solid sources on the web. As an old lefty activist (one of the many who did NOT morph into neo-cons) the degree of politico-social, artistic and personal influence on my life has been incalculably huge. I dare say this must be at least as true of many others of all ages.

The graphic aspects of the web are a very strong part of the phenominum. It is the incorporation of photography and visual art that makes the web such a powerful influence.

Still, the web as a medium of art/information/activism has not even been tickled, much less scratched or plumbed. The limits of this medium as a living, evolving (and decaying in parts), collective, global work of art in progress may never be reached. The degree of world societies' Internet use is still small and rapidly growing in comparison with more mature media.

[klevenstein]

(continuing, sorry about the length)

When we stumble onto an old page that hasn't been updated for a few years, it feels like going back through entire generations of the form. These relics are the pages that have not been treated as evolving things, but are static (not saying this can't be beautiful in it's own way, too). On the other hand, some pages become invisible or updated before we've viewed them, so parts of the work are very fleeting.

(my latest bedroom-inhabiting foster cat)

[jawbone]

Once read an article giving tips to amateur photographers on taking pictures of people (like, portraits) which said never, never shoot up your subject's nose--it is usually highly unflattering and very difficult to achieve a good photo--or, at least, one the subject wants to look at!

These photos seem to be taken during one of those somewhat fast shoots, with the photographer moving around, asking the subject to follow with their eyes. Thus the sideways, somewhat sinister result.

This photographer seemed to take everyone from a "up your nose" angle, plus the lighting and side angles created uncomfortable views of these people.

I've seen Josh Marshall in two other photos, both used on his site, and I would never have recognized him if he hadn't been identified.

Ridicule is a major means of destruction, btw. And it's not just the MCM*, even NPR had thier ombudsman on discussing blogs somewhat dismissivelyl.

*Maintstream Corporate Media