June 07, 2005
BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: One, Two, Three, Can You Digby It, Sucka?
Today the Blogometer talks to lefty Digby, who writes Hullabaloo.
What is your full name?
Wouldn't you like to know? Just call me digby.
What is your age?
48
Where did you grow up?
All over the world. My father was in the military and then the military industrial complex.
Where do you live now?
Santa Monica, Califronia
What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?
I work in a very unglamorous part of a very glamorous industry doing what most white collar workers do. Shuffling papers and sitting in meetings. It's as dull as dishwater; trust me. I have never worked on anything more than a local political campaign and walking precincts for the Democrats every four years. I have experience in the entertainment media, but not the press. From what I can see, there is little difference.
When did you start blogging and why?
I started writing on usenet and political boards back in the 90's during the Great Republican Panty Raid. At the time I considered it a healthy new alternative to drunkenly sitting at the end of the bar pontificating to the ashtray, and certainly an improvement over banging my head repeatedly against a wall.
Seriously, it was a beautiful little example of that vaunted dot-com synergy. The internet became available just as American politics turned batshit crazy. When blogs emerged as the next big thing it seemed a natural fit for me --- my own little soap box where nobody could tell me to shut up. It quickly evolved into an obsession. I've barely left the house in three years.
What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?
I can't say that I have a favorite post. I've been at this a long time now, by blogging standards. I wrote a series of posts on Lincoln's Cooper Union speech in which I compared the current state of politics to the period just before the civil war that people seemed to find intriguing. And of course, readers can't get enough of my post excerpting passages from James Dobson's childrearing tract "The Strong Willed Child" in which he brags of beating his little daschund (named Sigmund, of course) with a belt.
Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?
Let's just say it's an up-at-dawn, soul destroying seige that I can never fully tell you about.
OK. I admit that it's hard to pry me away from the computer. But sadly, sometimes I have to actually do things that make a small amount of money. No matter what, I'm always online first thing with my morning cup of caffeine. I check in all day and often throughout the evening. During the election I was posting constantly. Otherwise it depends on my work schedule or my level of inspiration. I try to write several posts a day but often fall short.
Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?
That's very tough. There are a huge number of great bloggers out there and I read most of them at one time or another. I'm dependent upon Atrios to tell me which way the wind is blowing in the blogosphere every day. He's got a real nose for the zeitgeist. Avedon Carol reads more blogs and posts interesting links to them than any human should be allowed to do. For sharpness and clarity of thinking, nobody is as good as Matthew Yglesias. I don't know how anyone can read and write so much, so constantly, so well. The Daou Report reads all the right wing blogs so I know what's cooking with them. And for the sheer joy of reading wonderful prose, both humorous and moving, I always read James Wolcott, Roy Edroso, Jeanne D'Arc and Arthur Silber.
I'm afraid I don't have time to read any non-political bloggers. If I'm not reading political blogs, newspapers, magazines or books, I'm working, sleeping or interacting with fellow humans. Sometimes even with my spouse.
Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?
Paul Krugman is probably most liberal bloggers' favorite columnist because he is the only one who writes the way we write. In our view he tells it like it is -- smart, uncowed straight talk, filled with righteous indignation. I have also long loved Gene Lyons and for political analysis, Ron Brownstein is always interesting.
Frankly, I think the liberal punditocrisy is a big part of liberals' problems and is what perpetuates the milquetoast image that's killing us. I have a much bigger beef with them, as a group, than I do with the MSM as a whole. I understand why Democratic politicans sometimes have to be cautious and overly prudent: they have to face voters and Republicans. I have no idea why liberal pundits are so timid.
What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?
Any show that features young reporters looking at computer screens and reading from blogs. That's what I call exciting television news.
Actually, there is virtually no news program worth watching on television. I often have it on in the backround while I write, but it's mostly to document the outrages. The shout fests are so predictable by now that I can keep the sound off and mouth the talking points before they even regurgitate them. I get my news from a large variety of print and online sources.
What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?
NY Times, Washington Post, BBC, MSNBC, The Guardian, Weekly Standard, The New Republic, National Review and a few others. I visit other newspapers also, but irregularly, and often through a link on a topic I'm researching.
What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?
I visit all the top liberal blogs and many others as well. I also regularly read Slate, Salon and Democratic Underground, Smirking Chimp and the like. I don't really have a ritual, however. I tend to write longer pieces, and I don't write all that fast by blogging standards, so some days I never get past the NY Times or Daily Kos.
How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?
I read the L.A. Times every day in its dead tree version.
How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?
If I knew that I'd be making some stock buys right now. I really have no idea.
Blogs and other online media will eventually be seen, I suspect, as helpful to the dailies and newsmagazines in that they are for the first time in many years beginning to make the printed word the default method to get real news again. It's just more fragmented and less local than it used to be -- like everything else in the world. And yes, they have to put up with criticism, but they also have many more eyes that are reading them. It seems like a fair trade-off.
Blogs will be their friends once they find a modern financial model to make a decent profit from the internet. (Subscriptions aren't going to do it. It has to be advertising.)
As for content, as I said, the internet serendipitously came along at the same time that American politics fell off a cliff. The mainstream media continues in its failure to either see or admit that. Blogs are simply filling a void. When the world goes nuts you can either ignore it and hope it goes away or start screaming. We're screaming. If the mainstream media finally hears us and takes stock of itself many of us will probably go back to shopping or watching "Law and Order" or whatever it is we did before impeachments, supreme court decided elections, inscrutable wars, torture and nuclear options began happening and the media blithely carried on as if everything were normal. I earnestly look forward to that day.
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