Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas, a leading voice in the generational change-up of the Democratic Party, and the American left appeared on KUOW's The Conversation (m-f, 1-2p) today.
Also: local bloggers David Goldstein and West Seattle Blog's Tracy Record.
(photo: Markos)
(Many who might have been really interested knew nothing about it. the show was not well promo-ed by the public radio station who's known for shrinking from promotion)
The topic was about bloggers letting commenters write pseudonymously and profanely on their
sites.
Pseudonymous commenters, according to Markos, are stripped of
everything but their message which will be judged on its efficacy
alone. It's egalitarian communication.
(photo: Ross Reynolds)
Record and her husband are former legacy journalists doing real shoeleather journalism in the West Seattle neighborhood on their award winning blog. She judged anonymity to be important, but polices the threads for profanity and ad hominem attacks.
When Goldy said the Federalist Papers, and the famous American revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense were published at first anonymously -- Ross asked incredulously: Are you comparing your blog comments to the Federalist Papers?
(photo: Tracy Record)
David replied, "Absolutely. I think ... the blogoshere, bloggers are the pamphleteers of the 21st Century. We've had a relatively brief -- maybe a 70 year period of the journalistic paradigm we're coming out of -- and now we're heading back to the way it [was] for centuries."
(photo: Goldstein)
What bloggers do is still exotic and crazy pants to mainstream media professionals like Ross Reynolds and his colleagues on KUOW. We live in parallel universes.
Legacy media has been slow to get that the consumers of information are demanding participation in its dissemination. They wonder why they're declining and have problems building communities on their websites.
This segment is a great listen. A podcast is here. (The interview starts about 34 minutes in).
NPR/KUOW has the gravitas in this market to get 'gets' that the AM stations never will. That brings with it a responsibility to do a better job of helping listeners know who and when.
Hardworking Conversation producer David Hyde writes:
So I agree 100 percent. More Markos promotion would have been better. That said, the deal is we're a breaking news/ listener driven show. Unlike the other KUOW talk shows, we come up with the shows that morning. [...] Also our mission is to encourage listeners to get involved. So that's also the focus in the daily promos.
We got bent out of shape because we didn't know about the show in time to post about it. But on the whole, Wednesday's show was great. We hope KUOW producers will continue to bring new media people -- people like Goldstein and Record -- even Sound Politics' deluded Eric Earling can add to their well-attended discussions.
There are lots of platforms out there competing for the community's earballs; even bigger audiences for KUOW could be had with just a little more promotion. (And removing whatever it is that's stuck in Steve Scher's backside... we're worried about him)
One small correction - I am not a legacy journalist.
I am a legacy advertising guy and I have the polyester pants, white belt, and matching white shoes to prove it.
Posted by: Patrick | August 21, 2008 at 07:51 AM
Patrick sells himself short. Well, not literally, although the CPM on our ad rates is ridiculously low given our traffic. Anyway, he's the one in the family with the journalism degree; I just had a lot of great mentors along the way. Thanks for mentioning us (and both of us are also former radio types BTW - he worked in Colorado, I worked in California and Nevada ... used my real name as my air name because with a surname like Record, who wouldn't?).
Posted by: Tracy | August 21, 2008 at 08:55 AM
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, worse then waterboarding.
Posted by: Toledo Stripper | August 21, 2008 at 01:11 PM
Markos Moulitsas isn't a leading anything. Go to downtown Seattle and ask the first hundred people you see who he is, and you'll hear one hundred people say "Markos who?"
Posted by: DT | August 22, 2008 at 01:48 PM