The blogosphere, according to the right
Hugh Hewitt’s skewed thesis on the 21st Century Information Reformation
By Shayne Bowman
2004 was the year of the blog. Merriam-Webster added the word “blog” to it’s official lexicon. Blogs made the cover of Time for Rathergate and were nearly named the magazine’s People of the Year. Bloggers covered the presidential conventions of both major parites; and impacted the outcome of the presidential campaign in numerous ways — through grass-roots reporting, fact-checking the media, providing analysis and perspective on issues, as well as fundraising, social networking and advocacy for candidates.
It’s no surprise that 2004 was also the year that weblogs began to significantly enter the awareness of the mass media consumer, achieving a collective readership of 32 million U.S. citizens.
A new book by nationally syndicated conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World, aims to convince today’s leaders (in business, government, church, media, etc.) to pay attention to and engage an emerging new media power — the blogosphere.
The blogosphere is the term used to describe the sum total of all interactive blog communication. Hewitt ought to know something about the subject. He’s been writing about the rise of new media since 2001. Since HughHewitt.com was launched in early 2002, more than 10 million people have visited his weblog.
Unfortunately, right from the start, Hewitt’s conservative ideology takes over and distracts from otherwise sound messages in his Introduction. “People don’t trust the old mainstream media with anything like the old level of confidence,” says Hewitt. Okay, I’m with you Hugh. “There are plenty of books out there that explain what happened, but it basically comes down to the left-leaning ideology that was always there and increasingly became so widespread, transparent, and arrogant as to repel half the country. If you want to argue the point, this book isn’t for you. Go watch your DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11 again.” Um…. I’ll get right on that.
I’m not a professional media critic, but I’m fairly well-read on the subject of declining credibility in mainstream media, and it isn’t as simple as a partisan debate. In a column about the post-Jayson Blair state of journalism, Time magazine media critic James Poniewozik summed up the complex facets of the issue like this:
“Journalists think trust equals accuracy. But it's about much more: passion, genuineness, integrity. There are the perennial charges of bias, which grow louder the more bitterly split the electorate gets. But there's also the problem that many big-media journalists are now cautious, well-paid conformists distant from their audiences and more responsive to urban elites, powerful people and megacorporations — especially the ones they work for. Hence the bland news anchors who verge on self-parody; magazines so commercial they're practically catalogs; timid pack journalism; local newscasts shilling for their corporate parents; saturation coverage of trials-of-the-minute and movies we know will be lousy but will have big opening weekends. Yes, people watch and buy all this stuff. That doesn't mean they respect it. They see a profession that acts excited about a lot — Laci Peterson, The Matrix Reloaded, political horse races — but cares about nothing.”
Passion is exactly what is attractive about weblogs. They are usually created, not for pure economic gain, but because the author is wildly passionate about a subject. The creators genuinely seem to care and hope to make a difference. When they make a mistake, webloggers often admit to it. They are willing to debate and link to differences of opinion. Bloggers are also equally as biased as mainstream media. The difference is that webloggers are much more likely to be transparent about their affiliations, whereas mainstream journalists aren’t allowed to admit such things.
Throughout the book, Hewitt doesn’t miss a chance to drop some partisan condescension. Any blogger mentioned in the book who is even remotely left-leaning is described parenthetically as “off-the-wall,” “incoherent” or “like the crazy aunt in the basement.”
Not to mention, according to Hewitt, there is currently a talent gap among political bloggers. “The political left is seriously behind in the promotion and development of bloggers with insight and good humor,” Hewitt claims. “And there is a great deal more encouragement among the center-right for entrants… a generosity of spirit that I just don’t see on the left side of the spectrum. This is a decided advantage for my center-right ideology.” Hewitt provides little or no evidence to support this theory.
The only thing about leftist blogs that draws any respect from Hewitt is a large number of site visitors. But really, is it necessary to be so condescending to liberals in a business book about the blogosphere?
Hewitt appears to have missed the driving spirit of the blogosphere. Weblogs did not emerge solely as a reaction against a leftist establishment media. The blogosphere empowers anyone who is disenfranchised — for any reason. This is why the blogosphere is often described as the “democritization of media.”
Overall, I support the advice in Hewitt’s book. His main message is spot on: the weblog bus has left the station at a tremendous speed and businesses seriously need to consider getting on the bus or prepare to get run off the road.
In the book’s first of three sections, Hewitt focuses on understanding the power and influence of the blogosphere. Foremost evidence is what Hewitt calls “the founding myths of the blogosphere” — major news events that were ignored or missed by mainstream media but were discovered, discussed and made internationally known by weblogs.
Hewitt’s four myths are: the ousting of Senator Trent Lott over comments at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party; the plagiarism by New York Times reporter Jayson Blair and the resulting resignation of the paper’s editor-in-chief Howell Raines; the Dan Rather/CBS debacle concerning fraudulent documents about President Bush’s National Guard service; and Senator John Kerry’s battle with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the presidental campaign. (It’s unclear why Hewitt didn’t include 9/11 as a key myth. And in a book by anyone but a conservative like Hewitt, the role of weblogs in the Dean campaign would also be a key myth.)
The most important trait that all these events share is what Hewitt calls the blogosphere’s “destructive power.” If Senators, network TV executives and journalists with distinguished careers can be “humbled by the blogosphere,” warns Hewitt, “so, too, can you, your company, your movie, your church, your anything.” This is excellent advice, especially for businesses who seem to get blindsided by the blogs on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
On the flipside, Hewitt says the blogosphere also has “a parallel but only dimly understood creative energy.” For some reason, there are few, if any, examples of this positive power in the book.
Equally important to understanding the power of the blogosphere is Hewitt’s analogy between the effect weblogs are having on the mass media (an “Information Reformation”) and the role of the movable-type printing press in the 16th Century Protestant Reformation. In the same way an emerging technology democritized religion, weblogs are now democritizing mass media. It’s an illuminating and relevant historical analogy about the Information Age. As Hewitt points out, “Then as now, information is an essential element of freedom. …At last individuals could speak, and none could silence them.”
The second section of Hewitt’s book explains why mainstream media is losing it’s credibility and what motivates bloggers to participate in new media.
As trust and credibility are waning among mainstream media, Hewitt explains that media habits are up for grabs. The mainstream media audience is searching for trustworthy sources of news and information. Hewitt’s advice for capturing this transient audience is simple (explained in third and final section of the book) — have a individual who is highly-qualified in a particular field or subject create a timely and accurate weblog, written with an authentic voice. Naturally, credibility will follow. (This sounds awfully familiar, as these are tenets that were preached to me in journalism school.) Remarkably, Hewitt never spells out how exactly that’s accomplished.
What does “authentic voice” mean? What are some examples of authentic voice? What are the challenges for a CEO writing a public weblog with an authentic voice? How does someone go about developing an authentic voice? Are there other traits, besides being timely and accurate, that can help a blogger earn credibility? It’s not that he’s wrong. Hewitt couldn’t be more correct. But he makes it sound a lot easier than it is, and provides little guidance for doing it right. As Hewitt notes in his final chapter, “To build and maintain trust is a tremendously difficult thing, requiring patient attention to detail and discipline over long periods of time.”
The issue of how to earn credibility is further confused because Hewitt is a self-proclaimed technoligical idiot. “(A weblog) isn’t a website — websites are too static and clunky…. The crucial difference between websites and blogs is the authentic voice and earned credibility,” says Hewitt. “Websites aren’t going anywhere. They are part of the information explosion, but the difference between a blog with credibility and a website is the difference between an ad in the fourth section of the local paper and a conversation with that paper’s editor about which neighborhood to buy in or which movie to see.”
What’s troubling about this generalization is the idea that website creation technology plays a role in trust and authenticity. He implicitly asserts that weblog software is superior to any of the dynamic content management systems (CMS) being used to publish any of the billions of sites out there today. Are Amazon.com, CNet.com and WashingtonPost.com less authentic or credible because they are not weblogs?
Blog is long on these types of generalizations; but short on practical theory, how-to explanation, academic research, and evidence from sources other than his personal experience. For example, there are no references to any of the books, papers or blog posts by experts in web community, weblogs, new media and online collaboration, such as Doc Searls, Dave Weinberger, Dave Winer, Dan Gillmor, Howard Rheingold, J.D. Lasica, Rebecca Blood, Biz Stone, Derek Powazek, Matt Haughey, Jason Kottke and others. For someone who is supposed to be “the unofficial historian of the blogging movement,” these are glaring omissions.
While some of Hewitt’s anecodotes are accurate and properly attributed, many assertions are presented as empirical evidence. (The lack of footnotes doesn’t help his case). For example, Hewitt claims: “After the blogosphere made its first splash in the flood that drowned Trent Lott (in 2002), the consensus among the media and the bloggers was that a healthy alliance between the two could effect major institutional change.”
Where did this information come from? There may have been consensus among a few bloggers, media critics and academics who understood the potential power of this collaboration. However, it doesn’t even come close to the sentiment among the mainstream media and academic, who were just beginning to grapple with the erosion of the journalist’s gatekeeper role.
In a Dec., 2002, Wired News article on Trent Lott and weblogs, Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California's School of Journalism said: “Bloggers are navel-gazers. And they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books. There's an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting.”
Even Glenn Reynolds, whom Hewitt praises throughout his book, said in a Dec. 2002, Boston Globe article: “I think you can exaggerate the role of blogs in (the Trent Lott story). I think it's probably the case that it would have been a scandal no matter what.” Reynolds, a University of Tennessee Law professor, is the author of the popular political weblog Instapundit.com. These two quotes are just a small sample of opinions that show that there was hardly a consensus among media and bloggers.
Hewitt’s book suffers from too much blogosphere cheerleading and not enough practical context about other online tools used for getting your message/ideas out. Hewitt fails to mention other important collaboration, sharing, publishing and distribution technologies — such as forums, wikis, instant messaging, SMS, peer-to-peer file sharing, RSS/XML. There is no mention of multimedia either — audio, photos and video are irrelevant to Hewitt. It’s only text and only blogs. That point of view is too narrow for an Information Reformation.
Ultimately, the sum of Hewitt’s good advice does not outweigh his partisan negligence and lack of references to back up his advice.
CEO’s will find a more insightful and thorough review of the impact of emerging new media in Dan Gillmor’s We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People or Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs. For a more instructional and practical approach to weblogs, I recommend Who Let the Blogs Out?, by Biz Stone, Blog On: Building Online Communities with Web Logs by Todd Stauffer or We Blog: Publishing Online With Weblogs by Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey and Meg Hourihan.
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Shayne Bowman is the co-author We Media: How audiences are changing the future of news and information, a landmark paper published by The Media Center at The American Press Institute in 2003 about the emerging new media ecosystem of weblogs, citizen journalism and partcipatory media. He is also the co-author of Hypergene MediaBlog, a weblog on the same subject.