Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Netroots Nation, New Boy Network?…Goodman Wonders

By

Columnist Ellen Goodman’s piece in today’s Globe is food for thought. Are we replacing the good ol’ boy network with the new boy network in cyberspace?

Worth considering…

http://www.boston.co…

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. I’m pretty sure Goodman based her entire column on a Washington Post piece that came out right after the conference.

    <

    p>
    Of course all this ignores that the organizer of the Yearlykos convention was female and that the blogger-moderator of the presidential forum was also a women.

    <

    p>
    Furthermore, as Atrios points out, the ratio of Boston Globe editorial board members is 6-2 male and the ratio of weekly Op-Ed columns is 6-3 male.

    <

    p>
    That being said, to the Left blogosphere’s credit- they at least recognize the problem and are agonizing over how to correct it.  I wonder if much of the lack of diversity in the Blogosphere is more related demographic discrepencies in access to the internent and cultural norms around political debate.

    <

    p>
    Its weird when left-establishment columnists like Ellen Goodmen attack the left blogosphere for not living up to some standard they create while these same pundits ignore their own organizations’ failures and the downright hostility to those same values from conservatives.

      • You’re right of course in regards to Ellen Goodman, I was speaking out of annoyance with the larger political phenomenon of left-establishment columnists tearing down lefty people/organizations for failing to live up to an ideal (although often attempting to achieve said ideal) while not spending enough time pushing back against those actively hostile to those ideals.

        <

        p>
        Its the whole “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” thing.

        <

        p>
        Basically, let’s spend less time tearing down each other and more time dealing with the wolves who are always right at the gate.

        • Think about this, though. Let’s say you’re a liberal columnist. For years, you’ve been hearing conservatives attack your integrity. Then, suddenly, a new phenomenon: liberal bloggers attack your integrity.

          <

          p>
          It must wear on people.

          <

          p>
          So yes, I agree, let’s not tear each other down.

          <

          p>

    • Also her comments about angry women being regarded as “bitches” on the Left Blogosphere seemed odd to me. I’m thinking of the enormous respect Digby has. Isn’t the front page crew at dKos majority female? (Maybe I’m not counting correctly.) There are plenty of angry, eloquent, and respected women who post there. In terms of influence, Firedoglake is pretty high up.

      <

      p>
      But two other thoughts. (1) We do expect more of the Left Blogosphere than we do of the Boston Globe. Was Atrios’ collecting neener-neener points?

      <

      p>
      (2) A problem on the left side of the political spectrum is that there are a lot of liberals and people open to liberalism who just hate (hate!) bickering, partisan combat, arguing, and not saying the nicest things. Such people are not going to read blogs that much and, if they write blogs, they will be light on the zing. The result: blogs tend toward the combative. I bet a larger percentage of men like that style than women — even though, there are likely to be more liberal women than liberal men.

      • Although, for my money, they were points (0) and (2).

        <

        p>
        I tend to read the post, and then sometimes notice who’s login posted it.  Often, I immediately forget the login.  I’ve been reading messages boards, online journals, and blogs for 10 years now.  I still disconnect with the logins.  In a sense, that makes me a “good” reader from a Goodman angle: even when the gender is apparent in the login, I ignore it.

        <

        p>
        I didn’t know Digby was female.  I didn’t know Firedoglake was run by a majority of women either.  I don’t read either site directly, but I do head over there when a blog I do read links, and I do read their quotes or references when they show up on blogs I do read.

        <

        p>
        Incidentally, not posting with your real name does allow this ambiguity, which may help to balance M/F “blog cred.”  A prominent differently-winged poster on this site had that ambiguity for a long time, and while that poster’s gender is now known to many regulars, the ambiguity may have helped with “blog cred” while that poster was building up the respect earned through polite, insightful, informative posts making the conservative case..

        On point 2, I think you’re also right on.  The action is in the conflict, and perhaps there is gender inequality in the ability to create — and the appreciation of — conflict.

        <

        p>
        As to Goodman’s article’s reference to the noose… while I haven’t been physically threatened, I do have two messages on my telephone answering machine that are incredibly nasty, left by people who didn’t like what I wrote online [both posts on BMG, incidentally].  I have not directly communicated with either of those people, online or offline, since.  If you don’t like conflict, you might avoid posting.  If you’re fearful for your safety [a problem for all of us, but perhaps moreso for women], you might avoid posting.  Of course, you might just work to conceal your identity… which again brings up the BMG discussion about posting anonymously.

      • from here that Digby was a woman.  Why? Her writing style struck me as being quite masculine, not feminine.  (I’ll forestall a flame war by saying that there is a difference between masculine/feminine and male/female.)  Her writing style is quite assertive, which I don’t see in writing from most women.  BTW, does anyone know what gender her co-blogger Tristero is?  The writings from him/her are also quite assertive, and that’s what makes it an interesting blog.

        <

        p>
        I recognized early on that FireDogLake was probably primarily run by female Democratic activists.

    • Based it on another column? So this is a lie?

      <

      p>

      I began tracking the maleness of this media last spring while I was a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. An intrepid graduate student created a spreadsheet of the top 90 political blogs. A full 42 percent were edited and written by men only, while 7 percent were by women only. Another 45 percent were edited or authored by both men and women, though the “coed” mix was overwhelmingly male. And, not surprisingly, most male bloggers linked to male bloggers.

      <

      p>
      Doesn’t recognize or admit similar problems in newsrooms?

      <

      p>

      Yes, this is the kettle of the MSM — mainstream media — calling the pot of the netroots male.

      <

      p>
      “I wonder if much of the lack of diversity in the Blogosphere is more related demographic discrepencies in access to the internent and cultural norms around political debate.”

      <

      p>
      If you read or re-read the same column, you might recognize she is wondering the same things.

  2. I think it’s a real issue, though men certainly get their share of hate e-mail.

    <

    p>
    This was the highlight to me, though:

    <

    p>

    Women have been talking about this since blogger Kathy Sierra was threatened with a picture of her next to a noose. Convention organizer Gina Cooper has two e-mail addresses, just one carrying her female name. Only “Gina” gets the hate e-mail with sexual threats and such comments as: “I’m going to hunt you down.”

  3. …with a post that can be read HERE

    <

    p>
    Apparently, Ms. Goodman just caught up on her back issues of the Washington Post.

    <

    p>
    I will reiterate what I said at the time –

    <

    p>

    It is a problem, and will continue to be.  Set aside politics, just for a moment, and consider this.

    When Ann Coulter, Michele Malkin or Laura Ingram are being revilled, how often has it been suggeted that it’s their ‘time’, or their views are hormonal?

    How often has it been suggested that a good lay would solve their problems?

    Compare them to personalities like Al Franken or Michael Moore.

    Comparing them, who do you think has a BETTER chance at sexual success?

    And when was the last time you heard a male blogger dismissed as merely sexually frustrated?

    <

    p>
    We had a spirited discussion on that thread, and I remain convinced that the Blogosphere is a reflection of the world, where the Male is the Default Personality, and if a Female speaks, it is considered a variable.  I also still maintain that there is more interest in ‘outing’ females, and using veiled threats and gender-based humiliations against them when an argument isn’t going so well.

    <

    p>
    Laurel – take it away!

    <

    p> 

    • Maybe I’m not reading the sites specializing in reviling, but I just don’t see the accusations that the problem with Coulter, Malkin, and Ingram is hormonal. I think it’s fair to say that Coulter tries to leverage her appearance and some on the left respond in a nasty fashion to her fashion choices and Adam’s apple, but I haven’t seen the same against Malkin or Ingram.

      <

      p>
      What is incontrovertible though is that female bloggers are subject to a whole lot of sexist crap from the Disagreeables.

      PP does point to an interesting grammatical phenomenon. In English (and many languages), maleness is unmarked and femaleness is marked. Thus, women bachelors, actors, and aviators all get special suffixes. The male suffix gets to play metonymy for the entire category.

      • …and vote in their poll.  They are considering locations for their next convention, and one of them is Boston.

        <

        p>
        You do NOT need to have attended the 2007 convention in Chicago to vote!

        <

        p>
        And after all, Boston can ALWAYS use another convention!

  4. It’s commonly written phrase around left blogistan, and its frequency implies just how valuable Digby is.  Goodman could have mentioned Digby in her article.

    <

    p>

    It’s not that women are invisible. There are “women’s pages” on the Internet. Technorati counts more than 11,000 “mommy blogs.” There are “women’s issues” blogs like the funny and bracing Feministing.
    But this is not just about counting, not just about diversity-by-the-numbers. It’s about the political dialogue — who gets heard and who sets the agenda. Cooper asks herself: “Are we going to do the same thing we’ve done all along, but with computers? Or will we create a new institution that allows for marginalized voices?”

    <

    p>
    This paragraph bothers me.  If, to Goodman, it is not about counting but about who sets the agenda, her omission of Digby, Christy Hardin Smith, Jane Hamsher, Shakespeare’s Sister, emptywheel, and mcjoan is glaring.  Firedoglake was THE place to follow Libby’s trial, and it was instrumental in the Ned Lamont-Joe Lieberman matchup.  The women of Left Blogistan do a healthy bit of the agenda-setting there.

    • Did I say us?  I meant them. 

      <

      p>
      Any how, it would be interesting to get a true count.  Not of “women’s pages”; of women bloggers. To me the “women pages” and “mommy blogs” seem more like things from the last century, not this century. 

    • There is an element of insidery-ness to blogging.  The fact that emptywheel and Digby are women is common knowledge, but in the latter case only became common knowledge recently.  I would say that a columnist looking to write a standard piece wouldn’t have the time or wits to get that information.  You actually have to spend a bit of time in the blogverse to pick up on those examples, and most columnists aren’t willing to do that…

    • Pam of Pam’s House Blend has been a powerhouse in blogging on LGBT and race issues.  Pam is Black, a married lesbian, and lives in teh Carolinas. I visit her site often, and have learned some interesting things.

      <

      p>
      First, Pam’s blog has been voted best LGBT blog in 2005 & 2006.  She is well respected, and has earned it.  Yet, she has reported that she is sometimes not invited to relevant political happenings.  And when she is, she is often the only non-white non-male.  It’s not like there aren’t other excellent political bloggers of color out there, or women political bloggers.  But I guess that the events one gets invited to depend to a degree on surmounting real world biases and breaking into real world connections.  I have heard this from other black and gay bloggers of esteem.

      <

      p>
      Second, my experience posting at Pam’s has been eye opening.  I post there under a different name, but I along with many others use names recognizably female.  When a troll happens by, it is the apparently female posters who get targeted with demeaning and belittling language.  Never the posters with male-like names.  Even some of the semi-regular posters, who aren’t trolls, indulge in this sexist behavior when they can’t argue on the merits. [I have found BMG interesting in that I can;t remember ever getting slurred as a female.  however, homophobia is rampant and unrestrained here at times.]

      <

      p>
      So I would say that to a degree Ellen Goodman is correct: the problems of the real world can be found in the bloggosphere.  If you’re a woman and wish to fully acknowledge you’re identity, you can expect sexist/racist/bigoted crap from men both on the ‘net and off.  And the same from some women who play that game a la Coutlergeist.  The alternative is to use a gender-neutral pseudonym.  But then you get crapped on by those who apparently categorize you as wimp for not wanting to deal with the pig crap.

      <

      p>
      I have every respect for people like the BMG editors, some posters here and Pam for being completely open about their identity and location.  However, in a realm where what is important is the quality of the ideas, for all the reasons mentioned above I believe that it is poor form to pressure anyone to disclosure their identity.

      • …you were posting on Pam’s web site under a slightly different handle than here.  No sin in that.  I agree with you that Pam runs a wonderful blog on LGBT and race issues.  I’ve commented there a few times.  I’ll only mention two other sites (whose URLs I don’t have with me here in Germany) Rod2.0 and Keith Boykin.  It was unfortunate that Boykin gave up his column in the Advocate.  But time marches on.

        <

        p>
        It really is amazing what you can learn about various subcultures by clicking onto the Internet.  It isn’t required that people agree with the subcultures, but it is interesting to know that they exist.  And why.

  5. … for blogging is among the lowest there can be in a public endeavor.  This factor, combined with net neutrality, is what makes a blog’s success or failure largely a product of readership opinion (and by extension, one would hope, substance).  If there is a population that is underrepresented there would really only be three causes…

    <

    p>
    1) Lack of access.  Cost shouldn’t be an issue, but if a population had less internet access overall that would be a problem (the poor).

    <

    p>
    2) Lack of interest in blogging.  Seems self evident.

    <

    p>
    3) Lack of readership interest.  Product of a meritocracy.

    <

    p>
    As such, I don’t see how ‘repression’ has been shown to be any sort of factor at all.  Indeed, the essence of the connectivity that the internet provides is that the readers / participants that want to connect with your blog can and the ones who don’t are not compelled to.  Its hard to envision how one would be suppressed as such.

  6. … that if the cultural norms are what result in a particular aspect of readership opinion, and by extension the relative success of any particular blog, then it should be said that this phenomenon is particular to the cultural norms and not particular to blogging.

    <

    p>
    If the result is a behavior of selectivity that isn’t moral or desirable or intellectually honest (take your pick), then it should be said that this a problem of our culture and not of blogging in particular.

    • Don’t these passages indicate a belief that it is a cultural problem that’s just continued in the blogs?

      <

      p>

      Nevertheless, there is another, less flattering way in which broadband has followed broadcast and the liberal political bloggers mimic the conservative talk-show hosts. The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men — white men, even angry white men.

      <

      p>

      But this is not just about counting, not just about diversity-by-the-numbers. It’s about the political dialogue — who gets heard and who sets the agenda. Cooper asks herself: “Are we going to do the same thing we’ve done all along, but with computers? Or will we create a new institution that allows for marginalized voices?”

      • … the main thrust of her article was the blogosphere.  If she really believed her qualifiers as legitimate then she’d be writing an article that pointed out nothing in particular.  I don’t think that is what she is thinking or saying so therefore I don’t think she is giving her qualifiers their deserved weight when considering the issue.

  7. I think Goodman makes a good point in general: more women bloggers would mean a better blogosphere. I think, however, to follow up on what Joel wrote above, that her article does a disservice to the many excellent, and very prominent, women bloggers whose voices do come through loud and clear, from Huffington Post and FireDogLake at the national level to LeftinLowell and BlueHampshire closer to home — even one differently winged frequent contributor here who blogs anonymously and should therefore remain nameless.

    <

    p>
    Goodman might have highlighted these articulate, activist voices rather than lumping them in with the “mommy blogs” (whatever those are): “It’s not that women are invisible. There are “women’s pages” on the Internet. Technorati counts more than 11,000 “mommy blogs.” There are “women’s issues” blogs like the funny and bracing Feministing.”

    <

    p>
    More generally, I think that dividing blogs into “male blogs,” and “female blogs” misses one of the important aspects of blogs: they are much flatter than newspapers — they are interactive group conversations, in a sense, and definitely not one-to-many pronouncements to be received like TV or newspapers. The many, many women who post and write comments at BMG are a crucial part of whatever interest this site may offer. To write that of the “top 90 political blogs” (whatever those are) that, “A full 42 percent were edited and written by men only, while 7 percent were by women only,” doesn’t do justice to all the women, and men, who must comment at those sites.

    <

    p>
    Finally, just for the record, YearlyKos was largely organized by women.

  8. I think it’s more of a statement on society and a question about women’s behavior than an attack on blogs shutting out women. Clearly the later isn’t true.

    <

    p>
    She does make clear that the dominance of men (white angry men at that) is not particular to blogs. It’s a talk radio thing, too.

    <

    p>
    For that matter, what’s the male-female ratio among candidates? Campaign managers? It’s an issue in politics period.

    <

    p>
    There is less of a barrier for women’s involvement in blogs. And the fact that it’s left dominated as Goodman points out might have given some hope that women would get more involved. (Take the assumption that lefties are more women friendly/likely to pander to women).

    <

    p>
    Goodman, I think, merely points out that it’s not quite going that way…yet.

    <

    p>
    Believe me, the glass ceiling and lack of color among the important jobs at newspapers is a very top issue whenever there’s a journalism conference. That problem is not solved, but it’s far from ignored. Especially by Ellen Goodman.

    <

    p>
    But again, I don’t think she’s pointing a finger at some cabal that is keeping women out of blogging while she ignors similar problems at newspapers. She’s just pointing out that the phenomenom exists here, too.

    <

    p>
    And unfortunately, I think she’s right.

    • Liberals never pander. We accommodate. We take into consideration. We value. We welcome. Pandering is what atheist conservatives like Karl Rove do for the Christian right.

      <

      p>
      Otherwise, though, I did like your comment, noternie, as I often do.

      • Yes, both sides value our constituencies while our opponents pander to theirs.

        <

        p>
        Does everyone here try to imagine what other posters look like? As an example of the entertainment annonymity adds, I go back and forth between imagining KBusch as racecar driver Kurt Busch and singer-songwriter Kate Bush, though it is likely you are neither.

        • I think you can objectively look at how the right does business, and how the left does, and say, one is pandering more.

          <

          p>
          The left, almost by definition, is not a top-down structure like the right. When we try to be, then we get the DLC. When we emulate the right, we fail. Sometimes, though, it does make getting elected harder when we go with our liberal instincts, despite having the majority of the hearts and minds, because we’re messier at electoral politics. We argue a lot in primaries (and not about who’s more righteous either).

          <

          p>
          Lefties, like it or not, do come more from the academic tradition of get-into-the-mess-of-it discussion, discourse, questioning the suppositions and a marketplace of ideas. Not in every case or every situation, but certainly more than the right does. Theirs is the realm of the authoritarian personality, lockstep in purpose and design. There are certainly hardheaded authoritarians on the left (I picture that Green party guy who basically was of the mind all corporations are bad, all the time, no matter what) and open-minded people on the right, but our top-downers are sublimely rarer, thank goodness, and their open thinkers even rarer, unfortunately.

          • March 2006, on MyDD, there was a very interesting pair of dairies on psychographic analysis of the electorate (first diary, second diary). By that analysis, the conservative side of the country has a big bloc of 33% (the Red Core) that all think relatively similarly and two smaller blocs of 8% and 6%. By contrast, the liberal side is split into four blocks (13%, 17%, 11%, and 12%) with progressives accounting for only 11%. As a result, its much easier for Republicans to gain cohesion.

  9. this point in particular:

    The typical political blog reader is a 43-year-old man with an $80,000 family income. Is it any surprise that Hillary Clinton gets only 9 percent in most online-activist polls, while garnering more than 40 percent in traditional polls?

    At this stage, the traditional polls largely measure name recognition. After all, four years ago, Joe Lieberman was leading these polls, largely because he was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000. Now Hillary leads the polls largely because of her eight years as first lady.

    <

    p>
    The blogosphere is different, though. The “online activists” are interested in politics. We tend to be familiar with candidates and their positions, and we base our support on this information. I suspect that if a poll were taken on Daily Kos of both gender and presidential candidate, the women would vote more similarly to the “online-activist” men than to the general population in the traditional polls.

  10. …in the article (I’m too tired to go get the exact quote right now) is that she mentions statistics of the average blog reader indicating that they average out to be well off middle aged white men and then uses that is prima fascia evidence that this is the reason that Hillary polls low among bloggers and blog readers.  This is absurd.  The lefty blog community has a pretty clear record of the kinds of issues and positions that they care about and it is pretty obvious to me that Mrs. Clinton’s platform and history don’t make as good a fit with these issues and positions as other candidates in the field.  As far as the righty blog community’s opinion on Mrs. Clinton, do I really need to go into the policy and issues disconnect there?  Not to mention the rabid hatred many rank and file righty bloggers have for anybody’s last name as it appears on CSPAN begins with “(Sen. D-” or “(Rep. D-” or anybody their leaders labels as liberal.

    <

    p>
    Goodman could have also added a qualifier stating that her polling could be because of the reasons I outlined instead of reasons having to do with her gender, but that would take the wittiness out of her pithy statement.

  11. …was fed in large part by the graphic that she has at the upper left on her home page.  It’s of a man.  Yelling.

    <

    p>
    Aside from that, there are obviously a number of blogs on the left that are managed by women, including Hullabaloo (Digby’s blog), FireDogLake, Shakes, Pandagon, Pam’s House Blend, yes and Next Hurrah (emptywheel).  Also, there’s talkleft, a legal blog (the politics of crime, very interesting).

    <

    p>
    I sincerely don’t pay attention to blogs on the right.  I used to, but they are boring.  On the right, the only blog that I click onto is volokh.com and then only when there’s a notable USSupCt decision to see if I can get a link to the opinions.

    • the best place to go is almost always SCOTUSblog.  They’re generally very non-partisan in their analysis, and they always have the opinions before anyone else.  It’s an indispensable resource.

      • …I actually don’t go there as often as I should.  volohk.com is a mess, being a group blog with so many members advancing their own separate and in many cases idiotic interests.

Archives