When you get any group of insular, echo-chamber-dwelling, chanting-points-motivated people who communicate with each other and almost nobody else, it’s a virtually inevitable trait of human nature that they will develop a worldview that centers on…well, them. \u00a0 It doesn’t matter if it’s Packers fans, Manhattanites, Kansas sorghum farmers, Ivy Leaguers, bowlers, avant-guard music fans, square dancers…<\/p>\n
But our Twin Cities’ “progressive” “alternative” \u00a0media are especially funny.<\/p>\n
Eric “Big E” Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project wrote about the Strib’s <\/em>coverage of last weekend’s “Netroots Nation”. \u00a0Or, he complains, lack <\/em>of coverage:<\/p>\n I was at Netroots Nation so I wasn’t paying attention to my newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/em>. Apparently, the Strib didn’t even send a reporter to Netroots. This time someone else noticed that their coverage of politics is not very thorough:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pusey links to a piece <\/a>at Crooks and Liars<\/em>, a rhetorical dutch oven echoblog. \u00a0Astute observers of the regional media scene will get a chuckle:<\/p>\n Now, I expect that local readers will tell me that the Minneapolis paper is a long-established right-wing Republican rag, and gauging from their Sunday editorial-page lineup, that certainly is the impression I came away with. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n [Facepalm – Ed.<\/em>]<\/p>\n And no doubt it is despised by the PowerLines of the world for not being right-wing enough, which then becomes their excuse — “See? Both sides hate us! Therefore, we must be exactly right in the middle!”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is what passes for logic on their side.<\/p>\n So to be honest, I wasn’t really surprised to see that the Star-Tribune, as I perused it over my coffee and hashbrowns this morning, had actually completely ignored the presence of Netroots Nation in their city and carried not a single word about events there. And indeed, if you check their archives, they couldn’t even be bothered to send a single reporter over to the convention center this week to write about the many luminaries there. Instead, their coverage consisted entirely pieces filed by Associated Press reporters. Oh, wait — there was one piece by a columnist that talked about Netroots and its deeper meaning without any indication he’d ever set foot in the convention.<\/em><\/p>\n That’s just embarrassing<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, but not in the way that the writer intended.<\/p>\n Pusey picks up the narrative:<\/p>\n But it’s even worse than that. They spent the weekend lavishing column inches upon the much smaller, conservative Right Online convention which shadows Netroots wherever it goes:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And why might that be?<\/p>\n Netroots Nation – the annual gathering of the lefty echo chamber in some hapless city – was a massive clot of angry leftybloggers and media types, angrily declaiming their anger.<\/p>\n It was nothing but an anger convention. \u00a0There was nothing of any news interest there, beyond the lefty “alt”-media’s apparent need to feel noticed.<\/p>\n In news terms, it’s not even dog bites dog. \u00a0It’s dog licks dog.<\/p>\n And RightOnline – a smaller event, as Pusey correctly notes – normally isn’t even that much.<\/p>\n Except for the three serious presidential candidates who spoke.<\/p>\n And the omnipresence of Andrew Breitbart, who broke not only the biggest political story of the past few months – Weinergate – and endured weeks of agenda-based hazing from the establishment media and lefty “alternative” crowd (before being proven 100% correct in every way<\/span>), and James O’Keefe, who has also launched some newsworthy bombshells [and endured months of agenda-driven hazing from the establishment and lefty “alt” medias (before being proven 100% correct in every way<\/span> ] was a bit newsworthy too.<\/p>\n