Off-topic, but speaking of WaPo hit pieces: what do you guys think of the Maryscott article yesterday?
I almost never send feedback to journalists, but here I fired off this:
Dear Mr. Finkel, I would like to congratulate you on the stellar piece on Maryscott O'Connor. You succeeed admirably in painting this impassioned leftist blogger as a hysterical hate-monger consumed by a primal rage born of personal trauma. Special kudos for exquisite details such as questioning her parenthood. The photo chosen by your editors was a deft final touch. I am confident that they are pleased with a hatchet job well done against the exasperating liberal bloggers who have bothered your noble publication and exposed its puerile rightwing blogger as a fraud. Most professionally of all, you even got your target to like you! Sir, my hat is off to you.
I would like to congratulate you on the stellar piece on Maryscott O'Connor.
You succeeed admirably in painting this impassioned leftist blogger as a hysterical hate-monger consumed by a primal rage born of personal trauma. Special kudos for exquisite details such as questioning her parenthood.
The photo chosen by your editors was a deft final touch. I am confident that they are pleased with a hatchet job well done against the exasperating liberal bloggers who have bothered your noble publication and exposed its puerile rightwing blogger as a fraud.
Most professionally of all, you even got your target to like you! Sir, my hat is off to you.
I wrote and as someone who used to be a photo editor I concentrated on the photograph selected as I felt it displayed a very low level of photo-journalistic integrity.
Here is the front page teaser for the article:
Good grief. The world's northernmost desert wind.
I expect more of this kind of thing. I think it reflects journalists and pundits' growing discomfort about blogs and their realization the Fifth Estate can shake up their closed worlds. I may be imagining this, but it also seems to me I'm hearing the strains of: "The left is imposing its discourse and shouting everybody down, we are no longer free..." coming from some of the pipes and drones of the Mighty Wurlitzer.
Keep screaming, Maryscott.
For those of us who know and love her, Maryscott shines through in this piece. For the garden-variety reader, maybe not so much. The naked fury is at center stage, and to many it may be disturbing, even pathological. This isn't Maryscott's fault, of course. And if anything, it illustrates why liberal blogs are needed in the USA. The "liberal media" is the evanescent daydream of unicorns.
The "liberal media" is the evanescent daydream of unicorns.
Once the home of great reporting -- Watergate being the greatest in its history -- the WaPo will likely continue to decline. Then again, even the reporter who became the face of the Watergate articles, Bob Woodward (or simply "Booby" as Atrios calls him), has become a hack. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Dear Mr Finkel I read with interest your article about Maryscott OConnor and the "Angry Left". As a regular blogger on DailyKos (under the name "Jerome a Paris" - see http://www.dailykos.com/user/Jerome%20a%20Paris), I'd like to point out an other side of what we do on the blogs of the left, besides venting, and would be really grateful if you accepted to do a follow up story on this theme. I write mostly about energy issues (as well as about international economic stuff and European news - I am French) and I don't think it's too big a claim to say that I am recognised as the leading "resident expert" on energy on DailyKos - as a matter of fact, I will be running the energy session of YearlyKos, the convention organised in June in Las Vegas for the DailyKos community. The reason this may be interesting to you, beyond my personal vanity, is that I have been leading an effort to draft a comprehensive energy policy for the United States, an effort to which dozens, if not hundreds, of DailyKos members have contributed to, helping to improve the content, shape the message and discussing the practical, economic and political consequences of every proposal. That has been made possible by the interactive nature of DailyKos, with the ability to rate comments and to respond to individual comments in a simple way, and by its size, which makes it possible to have experts on every topic under the sun around and willing to contribute their expertise. That energy proposal has gone through several drafts, which were extensively critiqued and commented upon, and we now expect to have a final version to unveil at the YearlyKos convention - which the DailyKos community will then ask Democrat politicians to endorse. This "open source policy forming" is something totally new, made possible by the unique position of DailyKos (the fact that it now brings together a huge number of people), and its software which allows for smart/useful comments to be easily identified thanks to the ratings provided by the community, and I hope that it will draw your interest. It was briefly mentioned in the New York Review of Books's recent article on Markos Moulitsas's book, Crashing the Gates, but it is certainly worth further investigation. It took me, its instigator, completely by surprise, and I am frankly amazed by the result so far (if you want to look at the latest version, it's here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/13/84849/522 (Energize America - A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security (Fourth Draft)). I look forward to hearing from you. With kind regards, Jérôme Guillet Editor, European Tribune Paris, France
I read with interest your article about Maryscott OConnor and the "Angry Left". As a regular blogger on DailyKos (under the name "Jerome a Paris" - see http://www.dailykos.com/user/Jerome%20a%20Paris), I'd like to point out an other side of what we do on the blogs of the left, besides venting, and would be really grateful if you accepted to do a follow up story on this theme.
I write mostly about energy issues (as well as about international economic stuff and European news - I am French) and I don't think it's too big a claim to say that I am recognised as the leading "resident expert" on energy on DailyKos - as a matter of fact, I will be running the energy session of YearlyKos, the convention organised in June in Las Vegas for the DailyKos community.
The reason this may be interesting to you, beyond my personal vanity, is that I have been leading an effort to draft a comprehensive energy policy for the United States, an effort to which dozens, if not hundreds, of DailyKos members have contributed to, helping to improve the content, shape the message and discussing the practical, economic and political consequences of every proposal. That has been made possible by the interactive nature of DailyKos, with the ability to rate comments and to respond to individual comments in a simple way, and by its size, which makes it possible to have experts on every topic under the sun around and willing to contribute their expertise.
That energy proposal has gone through several drafts, which were extensively critiqued and commented upon, and we now expect to have a final version to unveil at the YearlyKos convention - which the DailyKos community will then ask Democrat politicians to endorse.
This "open source policy forming" is something totally new, made possible by the unique position of DailyKos (the fact that it now brings together a huge number of people), and its software which allows for smart/useful comments to be easily identified thanks to the ratings provided by the community, and I hope that it will draw your interest. It was briefly mentioned in the New York Review of Books's recent article on Markos Moulitsas's book, Crashing the Gates, but it is certainly worth further investigation. It took me, its instigator, completely by surprise, and I am frankly amazed by the result so far (if you want to look at the latest version, it's here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/13/84849/522 (Energize America - A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security (Fourth Draft)).
I look forward to hearing from you.
With kind regards,
Jérôme Guillet Editor, European Tribune Paris, France
The underlying message seems pretty clear to me. I hope it's not too subtle for our friend from the WP.
Dear Mr. Guillet, Thank you for your note. I had read some of your posts and was already aware of your thoughtful approach to issues. I will pass your suggestion on to my assigning editor to see if there's more to be done on the effects of blogs; perhaps what you have described would make a good case study of what is and isn't being accomplished. If I can do more on the subject, I will be in touch. Again, thank you for taking the time to read the story I wrote about Ms. O'Connor and for taking the additional time to write to me. My best regards, David Finkel The Washington Post
Thank you for your note. I had read some of your posts and was already aware of your thoughtful approach to issues. I will pass your suggestion on to my assigning editor to see if there's more to be done on the effects of blogs; perhaps what you have described would make a good case study of what is and isn't being accomplished. If I can do more on the subject, I will be in touch. Again, thank you for taking the time to read the story I wrote about Ms. O'Connor and for taking the additional time to write to me.
My best regards, David Finkel The Washington Post
Let's see where this goes.
(I am making this correspondence public because, beyond the fact that there is nothing sensitive or confidential in there, I really feel that this "open source wonkery" is a collective thing and, while I'm clearly in the thick of it, it's not something I am doing on my own). In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
