Nope. No Liberal Media Here

From yesterday's NYTimes, we learn that leftyblogs feel they don't get no respect.

So what are they doing about it?

ven as online pundits criticize traditional news organizations as slow, biased and technologically challenged, a group of bloggers is trying to use old-fashioned telephone conference calls to share their ideas with newspaper and television journalists...While there is no way to know precisely who dialed in, reporters from news organizations including CBS, The Washington Post, Newsweek, MSNBC and The National Journal asked for a call-in number, according to one participant.

A telephone conference call.

I've been a conservative blogger for three years. I've hung out with some of the biggest in the business. And oy, have we interacted with the press.

And I have yet to meet a conservative blogger who can "call a conference call" with the major media. Get defamed? Sure. Set up a conference call? Fuhgettaboutit.

And the "blog" involved?

The bloggers, who describe themselves as liberal or progressive, say the conference calls are intended to counter what they regard as the much stronger influence of conservative pundits online. Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, the host of the two calls so far, views them as a step toward getting their reports out to mainstream news organizations.

Hah! Our old friends, Democrats.com! A Democrat hate site for people without the attention span for Democratic Underground.

And they're onboard with the wackiest theory of all; that the media are really conservative, and they're being frozen out:

Mr. Fertik maintains that the blurring of boundaries has benefited left-wing bloggers less than their adversaries on the right, saying that reports posted on conservative blogs more easily make the jump to the main news media. "The way we perceive it," he said, "is that right-wing bloggers are able to invent stories, get them out on Drudge, get them on Rush Limbaugh, get them on Fox, and pretty soon that spills over into the mainstream media. We, the progressives, we don't have that kind of network to work with."

Right. Bloggers have a hotline to Rush Limbaugh. Because Limbaugh respects bloggers.

Who are these hamsters?

By the way, liberal bloggers haven't had the same success for a number of reasons, most important being most of them stink. Few liberal bloggers can write, have a sense of humor, or know how to research a story. I'm talking about the bigs, here. Read Atrios, or Ollie Willis, or Kos, or the giggly fratboys at Pandagon; all any of them do is channel the impotent rage of their isolated, frothing readership. Yes, there are exceptions - although continued blogging seems to be eroding the work of even good writers like Matt Yglesias and Josh Marsall.

Paul "Deacon" Mirengoff from Powerline notes in the story:

[Mirengoff] disputed the idea that conservative bloggers had greater success in getting their stories spread by mainstream reporters. "The left just thinks we're getting a free ride and the mainstream media are just eating out of our hand," he said. "That's just not the case."

He added that he would be curious to see what happened with the conference call effort. "It never would've occurred to me," he said. "It seems a reasonable thing to do and if it works, we might copy it.

But that's Powerline.

Remember - Democrats.com makes "Talon News" look like the Times of London. And yet the wackjobs who run the site have instant phone access to the serious media.

Talon news may have gotten into the White House to talk with Joel Lockhart - but they never got an audience with anyone that mattered in the media. And they were no worse a source of news than, say, Democrats.com.

Nope. No bias there.

Posted by Mitch at March 14, 2005 06:32 AM | TrackBack