Liveblogging the Brookings event

Click here to watch the live webcast of the Brookings Institution panel, “The Impact of the New Media.” I’ll be liveblogging this event, and to make life easier for the Brookings tech people, newer comments will be higher than the older ones. UPDATE: Now that it’s over, I actually prefer doing it with newer comments below rather than above, so I’ve reconfigured it. Let the liveblogging…. begin!!! ————————————————————————————– 9:40 AM: OK, let’s see…. coffee in mug, pajamas on body [He’s liveblogging from home, thank you very much!!–ed.], editor now locked in closet [Mmmmmph!–ed.], earphones plugged in and on head to better hear the webcast, and a feeling of eager excitement that I’ve beaten my fellow livebloggers to the first post…. yes, yes, I believe I offically am a complete dweeb. Still fifteen minutes to the Brooking panel itself… there needs to be a word for that soft murmur of voices that precedes any C-SPAN-like event. Readers are encouraged to post posibilities. 9:55 AM: A danieldrezner.com exclusive — MUST CREDIT DANIELDREZNER.COM. Ana Marie Cox has chosen the teal shirt for today. That’s teal, people. UPDATE: I’m informed that it’s green… must be the camera. 10:02 AM: What, they haven’t started yet? This would never happen at a University of Chicago faculty meeting!!! 10:07 AM: Let the games begin!! 10:10 AM: Interesting… Dionne points out that Atrios, Kos, Marshall, and Yglesias were invited to live-blog as well but declined… one wonders if this ties into this paper’s observation that liberals are also less likely to link to each other. [UPDATE: to be fair, Marshall had a very important engagement this weekend.] Dionne also tries to roil waters by characterizing bloggers as “parasitic” on mainstream media. I prefer the word “symbiotic.” 10:15 AM: So Cox is high on Robitussin… again. “Do bloggers make mistakes?” Cox says (paraphrasing), “Duh, yes, but since blogs aren’t really a primary source of news, it’s not as catastrophic as the MSM believes.” Which is true — but another difference is that bloggers can quickly correct factual errors. 10:20 AM: Shafer approvingly cites Jay Rosen’s characterization of blogs as “distributed journalism.” 10:23 AM: Jodie T. Allen confesses to being a “web addict”; earlier Shafer states that many journalists Technorati themselves to see who’s commenting on their writings. 10:27 AM: Allen makes a shrewd point about the faltering economic model of newspapers… and it’s not just bloggers that are threatening them. She frets about the closing of overseas bureaus, which could lead to a decline in factual reporting, because “opinions are a lot cheaper than facts.” However, here’s the thing — bloggers often function as superb stringers. The tsunami disaster allowed many bloggers to provide on-the-spot reporting from a breaking news event. Of more concern is whether bloggers would be able to match reporters in reporting on, say, opaque givernments. 10:30 AM: “Blogging is traditional; podcasting is new media” Sigh…. Mickey Kaus is right–we’ve jumped the shark. 10:31 AM: Dionne is weirdly…. sexy when he reads AndrewSullivan.com. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!! 10:32 AM: Hmmm….. Sullivan has the sniffles, Ana Marie Cox has the sniffles…. no, let’s not go there. 10:34 AM: Ah, real news — Sullivan says that as he grew more critical of the administration, his fundraising drives produced lower yields — from $80,000 to $20,000 to $12,000. This is something I’d like to see the panelists discuss — to what extent will the lure of large sums of money (by blogger standards) act as an ideological straight-jacket for prominent bloggers? 10:38 AM: You know Internet journalism is getting old when Shafer and Sullivan reminisce about the good old days of… 1996. 10:40 AM: Sullivan makes a key point — for bloggers to be effective, they must be “pariahs.” The fact is, the medisphere can be a clubby place, both within itself and between reporters and politicos. Will bloggers get sucked into this vortex as well? 10:41 AM: Cox uses the phrase “circle jerk” at Brookings…. somewhere, Richard Nixon’s ghost is wondering why he ever thought of firebombing the place. 10:43 AM: Hey, E.J.!! The problem with Kos was not that he raised money for Dems, it was that he took money for consulting for Dems as well….. though I do believe this particular kerfuffle was overblown, since he admitted this from day one. 10:48 AM: “People are still fact-oriented,” according to Allen — even among Deaniacs. 10:50 AM: FYI, here are the specific links to other livebloggers: Ruy Teixeira, Ed Morrissey, and Laura Rozen; Trevino and Cole appear to be MIA. UPDATE: Here’s Cole’s post — Trevino never bothered to post. 10:52: Someone who works for the Center for Public Integrity says that many blogs promote slander and libel.,.. as opposed to the Center for Public Integrity, which never issues misleading press releases. Seriously, Shafer and Cox shoot this down pretty effectively — because there are costs to royally screwing things up. 10:58 AM: Dionne points out that blogs can foster the spread of rumor and slander faster than traditional media… except that blogs also make this spread much more transparent. The counterfactual is not just traditional media, but the spread of urban legends via private e-mails and listservers. The best example of this was the claim that the exit polls were correct and Kerry really won the election. Without blogs and other Internet media, this rumor would have just festered — because of blogs, these accusations got quickly aired and quickly falsified. 11:00 AM: Sullivan points out that bloggers are much harsher to each other than to any public figure — I have no idea what he’s talking about. UPDATE: Dionne mentions this comment — I am so inside the Beltway right now. Now I have to go and buy one of those Blackberry thingmabobs. 11:02 AM: Props to the guy who called the comments section of blogs a “cacophony of crap” — you know he’d been up all night honing that phrase. Seriously, I do think there’s a scaling problem with comments section — the bigger the blog, the greater the percentage of crap. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about this. 11:07: What does it say that I’m an avid blog-readers and writer, but any discussion of talk radio and the fairness doctrine puts me to sleep? In other news, it appears to be standing room only in the room. And let’s have a shout-out to those twentysomething interns who have to get those mikes to the people in the room!! 11:11 AM: Sullivan said, “hetero”…. heh. 11:15 AM: Cox thinks it’s useless to distinguish between “media” and “journalism.” I’d rephrase — there is a difference between journalism reporting and commentary, and blogs overwhelmingly (but not exclusively) practice the latter. 11:18 AM: Sullivan thinks there should be no schools for journalists, and that the “interns of the future” are those who are writing blogs in college. Matthew Yglesias has no idea what Sullivan’s talking about. 11:24 AM: Ratner is harping on the economics of journalism, and asking whether bloggers will reduce the ability of media institutions to invest in reporting. I understand ratner’s concern, but it seems to me this applies more to investigative journalism than most other sections of the media. For example, does journalism really have a comparative advantage over an expert blogger when a think tank or a research institute, for example, issues a press release? 11:27 AM: Sullivan points out that bloggers provide hyperlinked footnotes, which the New York Times op-ed page does not. 11;28 AM: A questioner asks what happens if a blogger receives an e-mail informing them that they’re wrong? In my case it depends on whether the e-mailer has their facts correct as well. I’ve found that about two-thirds of the time the dispute is more over my interpretation of facts rather than the facts themselves. The others — hell, yes, I’ll post a correction. I’m not thrilled about it, but it’s happened enough so that I’m used to it. 11:30 AM: Sullivan says blogs are a new form of literature. Great — I want my own Pulitzer Prize now, dammit!! 11:33 AM: Sullivan has blog insurance??!!! 11:34 AM: Click here to see Ryan Sager’s New York Post column discussing the Pew sponsorship of research into campaign finance reform that the panelists are discussing. Key section:

The tape — of a conference held at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication in March of 2004 — shows Treglia expounding to a gathering of academics, experts and journalists (none of whom, apparently, ever wrote about Treglia’s remarks) on just how Pew and other left-wing foundations plotted to create a fake grassroots movement to hoodwink Congress. “I’m going to tell you a story that I’ve never told any reporter,” Treglia says on the tape. “Now that I’m several months away from Pew and we have campaign-finance reform, I can tell this story.” That story in brief: Charged with promoting campaign-finance reform when he joined Pew in the mid-1990s, Treglia came up with a three-pronged strategy: 1) pursue an expansive agenda through incremental reforms, 2) pay for a handful of “experts” all over the country with foundation money and 3) create fake business, minority and religious groups to pound the table for reform. “The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington,” Treglia says — 100 in the Senate, 435 in the House. “The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot — that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform.”

11:40 AM: Nell Minow (sp?) asks two good questions: a) Whether the blogs can do anything that adds value in discussing the Schiavo case; and b) the dearth of women plitical bloggers with lots o’ traffic and links. On the first point, I do think that bloggers serve two useful purposes — a barometer of public opinion, and an opportunity to discuss specific issues raised by this case — the legal and medical questions. On the second point, I’m working on a large post which I’ll inflict on people later in the week. 11:51 AM: Ruy has the best one-sentence summary of the event: “an interesting but not cutting-edge event.” 11:54 AM: On the role of blogs elsewhere, do be sure to check out my Foreign Policy essay with Henry Farrell, “Web of Influence.” Sullivan is correct that blogs can be a subversive tool in repressive societies — but authoritarian governments are learning how to respond with brutal but appallingly effective tactics (link via Glenn Reynolds) 11:56 AM: Allen says opinion journalism are like “thumb-sucking,” and that women don’t like the taste of their thumbs. Must…. resist…. savage mockery of metaphor. 11:58 AM: Dionne gets the first Nazi reference in — and after an hour and fift-eight minutes of discusion about blogs. That has to be a record for the longest period of time before Godwin’s Law kicks in. 12:03 PM: Ana Marie Cox bravely calls for a moratorium of panels on blogs…. oh, sure, now that she’s hit her premier frequent-flyer status via blog conferences, she wants to shut down the ravy train. 12:06 PM: That’s a wrap…. and thank God, because I desperately need to go to the bathroom. LAST UPDATE: Here’s a link to the full transcript.