Post Magazine: Fighting Words

Take two bloggers from opposite ends of the overheated political debate, put them on a Washington tour bus together, and then ponder the fate of an increasingly uncivil society.

David Von Drehle, who did just that and wrote about it in yesterday's Washington Post Magazine , was online Monday, July 18 to field questions and comments about the article and the blogosphere.

David Von Drehle is a Magazine staff writer.

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David Von Drehle: Hi, and thanks for checking in.

This piece was an education for me--when I started I knew next to nothing about blogging and now I know a tiny bit more. But I am still not the right guy to ask a technical question.

Some of you may be wondering how we chose Barbara O'Brien and Betsy Newmark to be our representative bloggers. The answer: largely by chance. I spent several days exploring the "left blogosphere" and the "right blogosphere" in search of participants, jumping from blogroll to blogroll and link to link.

I had a couple of parameters in mind. I wanted bloggers who were not already widely written about, so that meant no Glenn Reynolds vs. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (as fascinating as that would be ...)

I wanted sole proprietors rather than members of group blogs. I can't remember exactly why I settled on that, but I did.

I wanted people who did not live in Washington, D.C. and did not work for political organizations or consultancies or interest groups or magazines. And I needed two people who could agree to join us on fairly short notice, because this piece was installed in our magazine line-up on short notice--for us, that is. Normally, The Post Magazine schedule makes the NASA launch schedule look whimsical.

I did not set out to choose two people as demographically similar as Newmark and O'Brien, but I am rather glad for that bit of serindipidity.

Anyway -- some questions ...

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Bethesda, Md.: Mr. von Drehle, I've been a blogger, running the Center for Random Rantage (at http://alexcacioppo.blogspot.com) since February 2003. My question is whether O'Brien and Newmark - the respective 'left-liberal' and 'conservative' bloggers - are meant to be representative of this 'left blogosphere/right blogosphere', or are they among the most visible? Also, what long-term effect do you see of the blogger movement and how it relates to mainstream media? Personally, I think it democratizes the process, allowing for aspiring journalists such as myself to help provide an alternate venue to the consolidated monoliths - the corporations that own most of the media - we see in the field, but I'd like to hear your opinion.

David Von Drehle: I like your blog name.

I don't think any individual can "represent" an entire hemisphere of the blog world, but Newmark and O'Brien are both individuals whose work is looked at and linked to by many hundreds of people each day. They aren't the biggest bloggers, nor are they blogging to no audience at all.

I think right now the blogs are a wonderfully democratizing influence, and I hope they continue to be. But more and more blogs are being bought/leased/created/adopted by large entities--existing newspapers, magazines, websites, foundations, etc. My worry is that new bloggers will have to get the attention of these MSBs--mainstream blogs--to find an audience.

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Spotsylvania, Va.: I hold blogs in low esteem. That low esteem stems from the following: One, friends and relatives who dispute my points of view bombard my email with blogs; Two, very few, if any bloggers sign their names to their writing. When one feels compelled to submit anything in writing for general consumption, that person should have the courage at least to sign his/her name to it.

The article improved my respect for bloggers somewhat, but not by much.

Charter Wells, Jr.

David Von Drehle: There are so many blogs out there that it's hard to generalize ...

Betsy Newmark's blog is plainly labeled with her name and some basic identifying information. Barbara O'Brien's name is also easily discernable from her blog. For example, there is a picture of the cover of her very fine book on blogging, with author's name plainly legible.

But yes, I found several bloggers I would have enjoyed meeting who declined our invitation because they insisted on anonymity and we insisted on full disclosure.

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Rockville Md: We are to Iraq what Syria is to Lebanon," she says.

Wow. Bombshell.

The best explanation I have for that remark, is it comes from a partisan political view that everything the President does is bad and his opposition is most likely to be right. But how did we get to this? Some others have exactly the opposite view.

I can't say that I like either one. But how did we get to this as a country? Or have we always been like this.

Sigh.

David Von Drehle: I was just asking my friend Joel Achenbach, proprietor of the excellent Achenblog on the Washington Post website: How did we get to this?

He reminded me that I once wrote a newspaper article trying to explain it. I am going to ask Kim to try to link to it. If you look you'll see that the echo-chamber created by new media is one of the explanations for our polarization.

So maybe my research is a bit circular here ...

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Petoskey, Mich.: Socrates believed that for a republic to function public discussion had to be a part of every day life. However I wonder about blogs, while they seem to serve as good ranting tools. Don't they tend to be just "preaching to the choir." ANd if the public discussion is just right to right and left to left, then what do you think the impact of that will be on the polarization of america, politically speaking?

David Von Drehle: Right. If I had a point earlier, this would be it. Good old Socrates!

One possibility is that blogs will evolve much as newspapers once evolved--the friendlier, funnier, less grouchy and ranty ones will get bigger and bigger while the true believers will live on their small but intense audiences. If you go back 100 years and read the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, you will see that he had pretty much leached the partisan intensity right out of it. That was crucial to the mass appeal of the paper.

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Bethesda, Md.: O'Brien and Newmark may share more common ground than they realize. Yet your article portrays them as having disagreements on virtually everything. Do you think if the emphasis was placed on what we agree on there would be less of an 'uncivil' nature in the blogosphere?

David Von Drehle: When we had dinner the night before sightseeing, O'Brien and Newmark talked at length about abortion and seemed to be circling around some middle ground--but later Betsy Newmark told me she wasn't sure Barbara O'Brien really meant what she was saying.

Look, agreement is good--but so is DISagreement. There's nothing wrong with argument. I personally prefer argument leavened with a strong dose of good humor and a minimum of self-righteousness.

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Eastern Shore of Maryland: Mr. Von Drehle, thank you for such a perfectly objective piece. You really nailed it. I wish more Post articles were this objective. As a Republican, I have to say that it doesn't surprise me that Ms. Newmark was nicer in her blogging and in her approach. I see that all the time. Recently a friend of ours who is a Democrat won a local election. We went to the after party and found a lot of the other guests to be outright mean and viscous towards Republicans in general, and especially towards our President. I was no fan of President Clinton but I would never have said anything negative about him at a party, to people I don't even know!; A lively debate among friends is another thing altogether. Our Republican friends as a rule don't bring up politics at a party, especially when they don't know the affiliation of their fellow guests. It's a generalization but one I see over and over again. Sure there are problems on both sides but I don't see the meanness on the right, especially among my Republican friends.

Thank you for a very interesting article!;

David Von Drehle: Thanks--I tried. To the extent I am able to play fair it probably comes from the fact that I know and love lots of nice Republicans, Democrats and assorted others. I don't think one side or the other has cornered the market on good manners.

One leftish friend of mine would say, however, "It's easy for them to be nice, they have all the power."

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washingtonpost.com: America in Red and Blue: Political Split is Pervasive , (April 25, 2004)

David Von Drehle: Here's that piece ...

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Rockville, Md.: How do people keep up with reading the blogs? I know how to post, but not how to read them. I can't be the only one who has this question.

David Von Drehle: I'm too dim to entirely understand this question. But several answers occur to me:

1) No one can read more than an infinitesimal fraction of all the blogs. In the time it takes you to read a blog item, thousands of new blogs have been created.

2) A site called memeorandum.com provides a good mechanism for tapping into the political blogs hour by hour. And many of your favorite topics are, most likely, served by a Blog of Blogs, if you will--some avid blogger who searches the web for useful blog entries and collects them for you. Happy hunting.

Any other advice for this person?

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Columbia, Md.: hi, David ..

I think your fears for the future of MSM are misplaced. Your article quoted Paul Mirengoff of Power Line as saying that "The basic facts of a story would come from links to news services..." Someone still has to produce those "basic facts," no? Who is better trained and better equipped to do it than the MSM?

David Von Drehle: I sure hope so--I have four children in need of shoes, food, and swimming lessons, which cost a lot more than they did back at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center, where they employed a sergeant who tossed us shivering Cub Scouts into the water one by one.

My passage about the worries of mainstreamers was intentionally exaggerated--but not entirely unfounded. While I think there will always be a use for traditional news gatherers,I'm less sure how the costs of employing us will be paid. The old business model of large-scale journalism is going to change, and I'm not sure anyone knows precisely HOW.

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Louisville, Ky: Is there any generalization to be gleaned from the fact that many of the larger liberal blogs (Kos, myDD, etc.) allow comments and discussion while those on the right (Powerline), do not?

David Von Drehle: It reminds me of a joke, but I can't for the life of me remember WHICH joke. Something about the comparative efficiency of a Republican precinct meeting and a Democratic precinct meeting.

(I know--you're slapping your knees just THINKING about it!)

Anyway, I haven't really studied this one--but it sounds like it might be a bit overgeneralized. I know both of my bloggers invite and enjoy comments.

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Orange County, Calif.: Mr. von Drehle,

I linked to your article from a favorite blog, americanthinker.com, and was delighted. Thanks for a great piece. The "Founding Fathers as bloggers" spin was especially ejoyable. Thanks for reminding us that Publius lives.

Emily Younger

David Von Drehle: American Thinker was new to me when I found it this weekend, but obviously the proprietor is a very discerning judge of journalism and, IMHO (as bloggers say!) runs a very handsome blog, too.

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State of Irony, Md.: "As a Republican, I have to say that it doesn't surprise me that Ms. Newmark was nicer in her blogging and in her approach."

Hahahaha. -Cookie Monster voice]: "Republican nice, Democrat meeeean." No wonder you didn't have any fun at the dinner party.

David Von Drehle: I was thinking maybe that would draw a response.

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Vienna, Va: Why do journalists focus so much attention on bloggers from political extremes as defined by the media? Doesn't this circumvent the whole notion that blogging is a way to encourage more voices to rise to the surface? In some of your other work, you've found that the "red-blue" divide that provides a crutch for lazy journalists isn't as simple as we would believe, so why not focus some attention on bloggers that offer truly unique (and underrepresented) points of view? How about some libertarians? How about some animal rights activists? Environmentalists who want nothing to do with Greenpeace? Democrats with qualms on abortion?

David Von Drehle: Um, I am only lazy sometimes.

The purpose of this piece was to try to dig a bit deeper into the idea I had raised in the April 25, 2004 piece--namely, the impact of new media on political polarization. So I worked with two polarized bloggers. I can imagine an interesting piece built around other point-of-view bloggers, but it wasn't this particular one.

A writing teacher once told me that a writer must decide, before writing, which pieces are NOT going to be written. Because you can't do everything in any piece, no matter how long.

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Alexandria, Va.: How long do you think the out-ed liberal print media can continue their death spiral before investors begin to short them out of the market place. NYT has fallen nearly 30 percent in 12 months, and appears on an arrow straight run to single digits, and thence mercifully, zero. Will big print media continue survive by attempting to diversify into MSM broadcast, that is losing viewers daily. Will big print continue paying lip service to blogging, while censoring every blog response that sensibly speaks truth to their patent liberal cant. Does big print, and MSM realize how much we all enjoy the inevitable demise of the failing and out-ed liberal print media. (Del Franklin)

David Von Drehle: Just think how many more people are seeing this rant, er, "question," thanks to the decision of the MSM to publish it!

My brother is in the manufacturing business and recently I asked him if he would give me a job in a plant somewhere after the MSM goes under. He asked me what the average return-on-equity is in the newspaper business. I told him, He said he would not waste any time holding a slot for me.

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Bethesda, Md.: I've read that there are something like 2 million blogs now. What is the standard for "blogship", generally speaking - any web page that is at least occasionally updated with the owner's opinions?

David Von Drehle: Pretty much. I've seen various definitions promoted involving all sorts of stuff that I don't understand, like "trackbacks" and so on. But I think the essence of an active blog is fairly regular updating, and I buy a recent Wall Street Journal column that said a blog that hasn't been updated for more than a month is not an active blog.

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Re: Eastern Shore: You know, it's interesting to me that even in this forum, there is still a serious competitive game of one-upsmanship among the posters designed to score points for their political side.

Eastern Shore's essential point seemed to be that as a Republican, he or she -and- all his or her like-minded friends were so much nicer, more civilized, more sophisticated, mannerly, and nicer than those nasty dirty Democrats who are so ignorant and ill-mannered that they can't even be trusted to behave properly at parties.

If that isn't exactly the kind of stereotypical "viscous" nastiness that the poster was decrying and claiming not to engage in as a genteel GOPer, I don't really know what is.

But moderates aren't immune, either. They usually decry the nasty dirty -partisans- of both sides, who can't ever be reasonable. And of course, they, as reasonable moderates, are so much better than the believers on both sides.

But there has pretty much always been this streak in political discourse, no?

David Von Drehle: Yes! There has always been this streak. Politics ain't beanbag, as Mister Dooley noted, and we will never just all get along. But that doesn't mean people have to be grouchy about it!

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Ooh, i just had a great idea: Let's send Alexandria, Virginia and his or her spittle-encrusted musings on MSM's "patent liberal cant" to Eastern Shore's genteel Republican dinner parties. I think it would mind-expanding for both of them.

David Von Drehle: Ha!

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Fort Myers, Fla.: Interesting piece. I have two questions; one on point and one off.

First, it seems that bloggers are much the same as any other so-called media outlets: They cater to their audience. The right-wingers all sound like Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh, and the left wingers all sound like Jeanine Garafolo or Randi Rhoads.

Are there any neutral or moderate bloggers?

Second, one of the best works of non fiction I've read in the last ten years was your book "Among the Lowest of the Dead: Inside Florida's Death Row."

Any designs on a follow up to that or do you have any other books in the works?

David Von Drehle: I'd say again that with millions of blogs to choose from you can find what you're looking for if you take long enough to dig. Or maybe you could switch off the computer and have a stimulating chat with a friend or loved one.

As much as I appreciate your very kind words about "Among the Lowest of the Dead," I must tell you that this chat is not about me, nor is it about the University of Michigan Press, which is publishing a new edition of that book in November, (www.press.umich.edu) nor is it about "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America," which is available in paperback at fine bookstores everywhere.

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Michigan: Vienna makes a very valid point. Blogs are a way for third party (non republicrats basicaly) to get thier voice heard. Your piece focuses on a democratic republican left right image. When in fact the dems can hardly be called true liberals (given thie rpolicy makings in office.) And in a way your article passively reinforces the two-party conceptualization.

Cheers

David Von Drehle: Cheers to you, too!

Blogs are a way for EVERYBODY to make their points. That's the beauty of them. Also the potential problem, because the more blogs there are, the harder it becomes for people to find them and be exposed to whatever new thing the blog is promoting.

As for reinforcing the two-party paradigm, I plead guilty. As I wrote in a magazine cover a year ago, I think the two-party system, for all its flaws, is better than the alternatives--the one-party system, which tends to produce mass murder, and the multi-party system, which tends to produce confusion.

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Silver Spring, Md.: David, what we need is more reporting at a local level, not more rants. For example, bloggers could find documents that would be discussed by planning agencies and write material that would help their neighbors prepare to give thoughtful testimony at meetings. There do not seem to be enough local reporters around to keep up with all this stuff. Sometimes the cover the meetings, but citizens need that preparation help.

David Von Drehle: I think this is really a cool potential application. The Post had a swell story on the topic over the weekend--search for this byline on our site to find it: Ariana Eunjung Cha

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The World: "If you go back 100 years and read the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, you will see that he had pretty much leached the partisan intensity right out of it. That was crucial to the mass appeal of the paper."

100 years ago, Pulitzer published an expose on an insurance company in New York State that got the World condemned on the floor of Congress by Teddy Roosevelt . . .

David Von Drehle: That's not partisan. That's good old reporting. The World was nominally Democratic, but highly critical of the New York Democratic machine, Tammany Hall. Its politics were extremely mild and muted by the standards of the day.

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Washington, D.C.: David,

Great article. I'm actually friends with Betsy's blogger daughter. I just wanted to point out that there are other political blogs besides those on the right and left. There are many libertarian blogs like mine at www.marklerner.blogspot.com. Take a look.

David Von Drehle: Say hi to Betsy's daughter, about whom I heard much. And tell her I like her blog!

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Eastern Shore of Maryland: In response to State of Irony, MD's "Hahahaha. -Cookie Monster voice]: "Republican nice, Democrat meeeean." No wonder you didn't have any fun at the dinner party" I say 'See?!;!;?' and thank you for cementing my point. Obviously you missed my comment that "a lively debate among friends is another thing altogether . . . . .sure there are problems on both sides . . . " And thank you Mr. Von Drehle. I'm enjoying this very much!;!; Hope to read you again soon. I still think you presented a hot topic very objectively. Great discusion too. Take care.

David Von Drehle: We'll give this the last word out of gratitude for your role in stimulating our conversation.

Thanks to all--and thanks for reading!

DVD

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