Daily Kos - Assignment Four

The Daily Kos was only mentioned briefly in Michael Massing's piece and he used it as an example of websites that "helped open up entire subjects that were once off-limits to the press." From what I've seen so far, I've read a whole bunch of different (but still left-leaning) perspectives on major national issues such as the health care debate and still more pieces that serve little more than jabs against moderate democrats and the political right. But I've seen precious few pieces where new stories or subjects have been brought up. It's still mostly rehashes and commentary on other news stories or other blogs.

I have to say though that many of the posters on the Daily Kos showcase what I would consider to be a rather remarkable and prodigious ability to regurgitate old and current news articles and blog posts into articulate pieces of political commentary. A majority of posters are pros at digging up articles, referencing them, cross referencing them to other articles, and consolidating it all into witty barbs designed humiliate the target(s) of the blog post. But beyond the barbs against Faux News and people who say the darndest things, there is a lot of intelligent insight and discussions about political issues so long as one is willing to dig through the muck-racking and reader comments.

My opinion on the Daily Kos in the past month has changed slightly. When I first started reading the Daily Kos, I had once thought there was little to no original reporting being done on the site. This is not the case as it seems that Joan McCarter (mcjoan) has put out at least three pieces I've read that contained original reporting and, this one most importantly of all, an actual original interview. In the past month, this is one of the few pieces I've read where a poster did some real journalistic work and did not simply do their homework on an issue. But it's still in my firm opinion that anybody with Google at their fingertips (or even better, a Lexis Nexis account or the like) can be successful at posting at the Daily Kos.