January 26, 2006
BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Mr. Baseball
Today the Blogometer talks to conservative Dan McLaughlin, who writes the baseball-and-politics blog Baseball Crank, and also contributes to RedState.
What is your full name?
Dan McLaughlin. While I don't blog anonymously, I don't use my full name with middle initial online so as to maintain a tiny bit of distance from my professional identity as an attorney.
What is your age?
34
Where did you grow up?
Nanuet, New York, a suburb of the City. I mainly grew up around the children of New York City cops and firemen.
Where do you live now?
Queens.
What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?
I'm an attorney, practicing securities and commercial litigation. I've volunteered a bit for campaigns, nothing substantial. The first one was Jim Rappaport's 1990 Senate campaign against John Kerry.
As a baseball writer, I wrote for the online edition of the Providence Journal in Providence, Rhode Island. My September 11 column ran in the dead-tree paper.
When did you start blogging and why?
I knew Bill Simmons from college, and in May of 2000, he asked me to do a semi-regular baseball column for his Boston Sports Guy website; it wound up as a weekly gig. After he moved to ESPN.com, I wrote for Art Martone at the Providence Journal from July 2001 until February 2003. But I wanted to write about politics, too, and preferred the flexibility of blogging, so in August 2002, I started a Blogspot blog. My current site, combining baseball and politics, opened April 14, 2003.
What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?
A lot of my favorite posts have been on baseball topics ... two stories where I really did some digging were my post on the Vietnam records (or lack thereof) of the 2008 presidential contenders and on the Commerce Department's budget.
I had a lot of fun with the "AWOL Bush" story, which involved shooting down a lot of misimpressions, but I was basically just collecting analysis from other people. My favorite recent post was an essay on the Harriet Miers debacle.
Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?
I grab breakfast and blog in the basement first thing in the morning until I run out of time and have to catch my train. I mostly don't blog at work, for obvious reasons. I blog on Friday nights sometimes, although I try to use the weekends to work on longer-term blogging projects, like baseball statistical studies. I try to do one or two short posts and one longer one, on a good day. Plus, I post quick thoughts to the RedHot section at RedState now that I'm a contributing editor there.
Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?
There's a lot of good ones, but I guess I'd have to say Instapundit, since I read him the most regularly. Also Tom Maguire, James Taranto, Mickey Kaus and Vodkapundit.
Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?
For politics, Mark Steyn, hands down. Also Jonah Goldberg and Charles Krauthammer. Non-political, of course, there's Bill Simmons and Dave Barry.
What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?
Probably CNN Headline News, which is always on. I get about 90% of my news from the internet, and since I'm basically at work all the time during the week, I don't see much TV. I probably haven't watched an entire evening newscast on the networks in 13 years.
What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?
For "straight" news, CNN, and sometimes MSNBC. For sports, ESPN.com. I avoid the Fox site because it has too many popups. It's worse than ESPN for pop-ups. I'm also a big fan of surfing the Google News front page. But I read more of the magazine stuff -- National Review, OpinionJournal, the Weekly Standard, Slate.
What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?
Changes from day to day, but there's a bunch I try to get to almost every day -- Instapundit, RedState (of course), Baseball Musings, The Corner, How Appealing, Vodkapundit, WSJ's "Best of the Web", JustOneMinute, Kausfiles, QandO, Althouse. Then there's the next tier I aspire to read regularly but don't always have time for: Captain's Quarters, Power Line, Matt Welch, Asymmetrical Information, ConfirmThem, Lileks, Yglesias, Kevin Drum, Protein Wisdom, Wizbang, Volokh, Patterico, Hewitt, Hardball Times, Always Amazin', MetsGeek, Baseball Primer. And, of course, the Blogometer.
How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?
We get the NY Daily News and (I hate to admit it) the NY Times at home. I often skim the Daily News in the morning, but rarely open the Times, which my wife reads. I get the Wall Street Journal at work, but I'm not always as diligent about reading it as I should be. I used to read USA Today religiously for its baseball coverage, but I've gotten away from that.
How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?
Blogs can sometimes beat the MSM at reporting news, if there's a story a blogger is well-positioned to get. But on the whole, I don't see blogs taking significant market share from the MSM in terms of its delivery of hard news.
One theme I've noted is the danger bloggers pose to what baseball analysts might call "replacement-level" pundits, who have editorial-page or network gigs but aren't gifted writers or reporters and don't have any particular subject-matter expertise (legal, medical, economic or military backgrounds). For years, these folks made a good living rehashing conventional wisdom. But the blogosphere has unearthed a whole world of amateurs who can basically do the same thing or better at little or no cost, and sometimes offer more specialized subject-matter expertise. Basic economics tells us that this will eventually drive down the price, or eliminate the jobs, of replacement-level pundits as more MSM outlets figure out that they don't provide all that much value that can't be obtained better and more cheaply by tapping the blogosphere for op-ed pieces and TV appearances.
Posted by
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
