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Clearing the Browser Tabs – Blogging vs Journalism Tuesday Edition Posted: 13 Sep 2011 03:10 AM PDT My friend Anna asked an interesting question about blogging vs journalism on Twitter and collected some interesting responses. I don’t think anyone hit on the right answer, or at least the answer that matches my observation, and my answer really was too snide but I didn’t have a lot of time to give a more detailed response. I’ll take a stab at it here. Both blogging and journalism are about the writer. I dare say that since at least the Watergate Era, most journalists come out of j-school with a desire to “make a difference” or “change the world”. If that’s not about the writer, I don’t know what is. It takes an incredible amount of ego to believe that and no one who does is going to truly treat any story as more important. Stories will always be a means by which the crusading journalist climbs higher and higher up the career ladder until they get to a point at which they can cover world-changing stories. But even that’s not enough. You can see journalists every day on the cable networks who flit from story to story like hummingbirds on crank. They don’t dig to the heart of the stories. They rarely come back and follow up on them. The stories aren’t important; the career and the ego are. Of course, bloggers are often guilty of the same sin. We want to climb the ladder, too. Many of us would love a full-time writing gig and plenty of us have jumped into high-profile stories in the hopes that someone farther up the line will notice us. Writers write for ego. That’s just the way it is. The thing is, bloggers are far more honest about it. That is the essential difference between reporters and bloggers. Don’t forget The Delivery tonight at 9:30 PM Eastern. I’ll mark my second anniversary as a podcaster and I’ll have a guest with me for the second half who was instrumental in my decision to start the show. He’s also a pretty neat guy and you’ll like him, so be sure to get into the chatroom tonight! And now, links! If you have any friends in New York’s 9th District, make sure you remind them to vote for Bob Turner in today’s special election to replace Anthony “ZOMG HAXXORZ” Weiner. Turner has a very good chance to take a strong blue district away from the Democratic machine in New York State. Over at Ending Spending, I found three ways that Social Security is worse than a Ponzi Scheme. You know the problem with rich people? They have money and they spend it on schools. The only thing that would have made this video by Chuck Woolery (yes, that Chuck Woolery) on Hollywood tax hypocrisy better is if it had been two minutes and two seconds long. Duane Lester, who will be on The Delivery tonight, wrote an interesting article about his second-ever Instalanche an included a few tips for any blogger who might want some of that sweet, sweet Instatraffic. I’ve gotten a few Instalanches over the years, including an amazing two-week period where I got three, but I honestly don’t know the secret. Duane’s advice is as solid as I’ve read anywhere. This is not good: First we gave away our manned space program, now we face a critical shortage of astronauts. Oh well. What did we need to go into space for anyhow. I’m sure the Chinese and Russians will take care of things for us responsibly and not at all with orbital mass drivers. If you’ve ever wondered why the Harvest Moon is so big and red, here’s your answer.

You Can Call It “Tea Party”, but That Doesn’t Make It Tea Party Posted: 12 Sep 2011 07:10 PM PDT I didn’t watch the Presidential debate last night. I even shut down my Twitter feed so I wouldn’t have to spend an hour ranting about it. Oh, I wouldn’t have had a problem with the candidates. I think they’ll all acquit themselves just fine and, if I need to, I’ll read the debate transcript tomorrow and pick out the good parts. I have a problem with the fact that CNN was involved with it. Oh, I get that the Tea Party Express was burning up to get themselves hooked up with a mainstream media outlet. It has to be tough living under an assumed grassroots name when you have all those big media dreams. But CNN? The network behind the wickedly-biased YouTube debate in 2007? Aside from MS-NBC, you’d be hard-pressed to find a new outlet that’s been more openly hostile to the Tea Parties than CNN over the past two years. Let me remind you of a few examples. Susan Roesgen, a CNN correspondent, went to the Chicago Tea Party rally in 2009 itching for a fight. When she didn’t get it, she did her dead-level best to make the folks there look like a bunch of butters. To my knowledge, CNN never apologized for her stunning ethical lapse and did not renew her contract her three months later. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper took the “teabagger” slur, invented just the night before by MS-NBC, and shot it directly into the mainstream on his prime-time show. He issued a half-hearted “if anyone was offended” apology at a talk about a month later. CNN did not, to my knowledge, take any disciplinary action against him. Jeffrey Toobin, frequent CNN guest, went on Anderson Cooper’s show just a couple of days after the “teabagger” slur and called the Tea Parties “hostile”. He also accused them of trying to “tap into an anger that’s beyond rationality” when prompted by the show’s guest-host, CNN senior correspondent Christiana Amanpour. Last October, Eliot Spitzer, disgraced former Governor of New York and CNN host called the Tea Parties “vapid” and said they would “destroy the country”. Again, no apology that I can find. Spitzer’s show is no longer on CNN. Apparently, it was as attractive to television viewers as Spitzer was to women he didn’t have to pay. That is the network to which The Tea Party Express eagerly and deliberately lent the Tea Party name. That is the network that will make happy talk tonight and savage the Tea Parties — average, everyday Americans who don’t want to hand their kids a mortgage-level debt burden on the day they are born — just as soon as they possibly can. But hey, they got their name on television, which makes it all okay, doesn’t it?

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