Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, otherwise known as “kos,” is of course responsible for the most heavily-trafficked liberal blog on the internet. He was interviewed by the NY Times Magazine as part of the publicity blitz for his recently-published book Crashing the Gate (co-authored with MyDD’s Jerome Armstrong). It’s quite an interesting little interview, and it’s very short – you should read the whole thing.
Here is the part of the exchange that I found most interesting:
Do you read your fellow liberal bloggers, like those who write for Huffington Post?
To me, Huffington Post gives voice to the voice. They’re celebrities who don’t need a platform.
That’s not fair. You can’t discredit bloggers like Jane Smiley or Nora Ephron just because they have a reputation outside politics.
These people don’t have trouble being heard if they want to be heard. Sometimes Huffington Post has noncelebrities â I am more interested in them, people who don’t have the chance to get their message out.
In its little way, that exchange tells us a lot about “The Media”‘s understanding of who bloggers are, and what the blogosphere is. For a Times reporter to say to kos, a guy who created his blog out of nothing and probably had about six hits on his first day, that his “fellow liberal bloggers” are the folks at HuffPo – and then to get snippy when he calls her on her error – is quite revealing. To someone at the NY Times, it’s next to impossible for a blogger to be a legitimate figure just on the basis of being a blogger. The legitimacy has to have started somewhere “real,” like at a big newspaper, or on TV news, or by publishing best-selling books, or whatever – and, in fact, that’s exactly the route that most of the bloggers (though not all of them, as kos noted in the interview) at HuffPo have traveled. Indeed, despite kos having had the biggest blog on the internet for years, the NY Times only thought he was important enough to do a one-on-one interview when he published a book.
Don’t get me wrong, here: I really like Huffington Post, and Arianna in particular – her reporting on the Valerie Plame business was among the best available anywhere. But to say that Arianna, or the rest of the well-connected folk at HuffPo, are representative of the bloggers, is to miss the point. As kos said, those guys would all be heard with or without the blogosphere. The blog phenomenon is about giving voice to those who otherwise probably wouldn’t have it. That kind of bottom-up phenomenon is a huge threat to the NY Times and the rest of the MSM, which all operate on a top-down basis, and which is why they have been so reluctant to realize what’s really going on.
“then to get snippy when he calls her on her error” I actually read this as Kos trying to protect his status as an “authentic” voice of the blogosphere: no one else is a true blogger, they are all arrivistes and slip-streamers. This is indicative of the intolerant attitude that pervades dailyKos — with its “outings” and “troll alerts” — and, in my judgment, has made it an increasingly shrill and less relevant forum since the last election. In MHO, the writers at Huffington Post and lots of other places, some new some old, are indeed “fellow liberal bloggers.” Watch for this tactic to intensify as Kos promotes his book. As to the “biggest blog on the internet,” the gadget blogs are much more popular, and Huffington Post will knock Kos out of the top political slot pretty soon if it keeps growing at the rate it has. As to the decision to interview the man, I actually think this speaks more to the pull of book PR agents and their cozy relationship with the NYT and less to a lack of understanding of the blog phenomenon, although I absolutely grant there is an element of the latter.
IMHO, kos is quite correct to point out that there’s a difference between someone like himself, who came to prominence through being a political blogger from day 1, and the already-prominent folks like the majority at HuffPo who thought they’d try blogging too. And he never says that he’s more “authentic,” or is more of a “true blogger,” than they are – those are your words. All he says is that he’s more interested in reading what “noncelebrities,” or people who wouldn’t be heard absent the blogosphere, have to say, than he is in checking on the HuffPo folks. That may be his subtext (probably is, in fact), but he’s clever enough never to say it, which is part of why even if many of the denizens and even front-pagers at his site are as shrill as you (and I, sometimes) say they are, he himself remains IMHO one of the internet’s best.
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As for the book PR agents, you’re absolutely right – which is essentially my point. Without a book company’s PR agent running interference at the Times, they’d never interview him, however famous and influential his blog might become. “A blogger? No thanks, not interested – we don’t talk to amateurs here at the Times. Wait, what? He’s got a book out? Which publisher? Oh, really? Well, have their people call our people and we’ll see what we can do.”
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Finally, yes, gadget blogs are more popular – but I said kos has the “most heavily-trafficked liberal blog” on the internet, and I believe that’s true. You can’t call boingboing or the like liberal or conservative – they’re about stuff, not politics or policy.
Boing Boing and Engadget. As to projections, Huffington Post has a lot more momentum than dailyKos, although I personally hope they both flourish: the internet is plenty big enough.
IT’s…it’s…why, it’s “AN ARMY OF DAVIDS”! Too bad Glenn Reynolds isn’t liberal enough.
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Even worse is Hugh Hewitt’s “BLOG” of more than a year ago.
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But heck, when a LIBERAL blogger writes a book – now THAT’S news!
The word he seemed to take issue with is “fellow” liberal bloggers. They ARE fellow liberal bloggers regardless of their background.
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I bet a fair portion of those people who already have voices did not at some point in time have a âvoice” – like KOS! My interpretation on KOSâs statement is that he is promoting providing a voice to people, who do not, but when their voice becomes too loud or their platform too big their voice no longer counts as much. This makes no sense to me.
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You can’t sensibly provide a platform to give people a voice while trying to take shoots at those who already achieved what you are trying to enable.
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By this logic no one should buy his book.
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