BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

We’re in USA Today

10 comments on We’re in USA Today

We’re in USA Today
: Kathy Kiely writes a fine overview of blogs’ impact on politics in USA Today today. Haven’t picked up the paper yet, but it appears to be the Page 1 cover story. Kiely talked to lots and lots of people, bloggers and political beasts (“Veterans of the political scene admit they’re having some trouble adjusting. ‘When I first got up here, I thought blogging was an Irish dance,’ says Tricia Enright, a longtime Capitol Hill press secretary…). It’s a well-reported piece that tells people why they should pay attention.

: Tim Windsor, the blogless deputy GM of the Baltimore Sun‘s site, emails this reaction to the USA Today story:

To your comment about “influencing influencers,” I think that blogs are currently the Velvet Underground of publishing. As someone once noted (Lester Bangs perhaps?), the Velvets had a huge influence over the development of rock music because, while they didn’t sell many records, everybody who bought one of their records went on to form a band.

I like that.

: Tim now says the quote may be Brian Eno. See the comments.

: Here’s the USA Today page 1.

: UPDATE: More fame (no fortune) as the BBC World Service Go Digital calls 2003 The Year of the Blog. Audio here. [via Blog Herald]

: UPDATE: Tom Mangan complains about the loneliness of blogging. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a very social activity.

10 responses to “We’re in USA Today”

  1. Choire Sicha Avatar
    Choire Sicha

    Yow, she called Drudge a blogger. Someone should get over there immediately and peel him off the ceiling.

  2. KMK Avatar
    KMK

    http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=USAT
    Yes, it’s front page news. I like this site newseum.org. 279 front pages from 37 countries. It’s also a great site for research.

  3. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    Actually, it turns out that the Velvets quote may have been from Brian Eno. There’s more here:
    http://www.wusb.org/dkline/word-031198.html#fn3

  4. Mikhel Avatar
    Mikhel

    To what extent is the media mischaracterizing the blog readership?
    Their audience tends to be an elite crowd of political junkies who have almost non-stop access to a computer and large amounts of time to surf the Internet for breaking news. In short: political consultants and journalists.
    Now, certainly, I’m a massive political news junkie — and I’d imagine this is the case for most of us — but I’m neither a political consultant, nor a journalist. I’ve noticed (and I think this is correct) that much of the blog readership is composed of university students, or University professors. Perhaps it’s true that a lot of journalists check out Micah or Glenn or CalPundit — but I’d bet the majority (or a sizeable minority) of the readership are students.
    You’re not influencing the influencers, Jeff; you’re influencing the people who will become the influencers; or, lacking that, you’re influencing the professors who will influence the future influencers. I think it’s mistaking the maple for the Sequoia to make note of the journalists and consultants, who are probably relatively set in their philosophies, and ignore the younger audience.

  5. John Avatar
    John

    Hmmm….Kos is a just a Democrat, Insta is a ‘right leaning’ blogger. Typical big media, typical USA Today. Maybe they should have identified JJ as ‘Canadian leaning.’ (Yep…still in shock and reeling about that one, Jeff! I’m originally from Toronto and invite you to wait in line for an MRI…6 weeks in Canada! Mark Steyn ain’t kidding!)

  6. Steve Smith Avatar
    Steve Smith

    Yeah, John, you caught out the USA Today on that one: another example of the lib’rul media at work. You’d think with all the money the paper is getting from Soros, it’d have a way of setting up permalinks, so readers can actually check out some of these new-fangled blogs she’s talking about.

  7. Trudy W. Schuett Avatar
    Trudy W. Schuett

    Story was great except they got the origins of blogging wrong. It wasn’t Pyra in 1999, it was Dave Winer in 1997. I e-mailed USA Today to let them know–wonder if they’ll correct it?

  8. tom Avatar
    tom

    Jeff: I was just being pissy because they didn’t interview me.

  9. Rootbeer Avatar
    Rootbeer

    Even 1997 is too late to be considered the origin of blogging. I’m certain there were people assembling prototypical weblog-like pages by hand as far back as 1992 or 1993.

  10. Marcel Perez Avatar
    Marcel Perez

    I posted on the link to Mr. Mangan, and the same thanks and appreciation are extended to you, Mr. Jarvis.