Mark Kleiman's Blog- Nothing Has Changed

Michael Massing listed Mark Kleiman’s blog “The Reality Based Community” as one of his picks for good journalistic work online. Unfortunately the only thing Massing says about it is “on drug policy, there's The Reality-Based Community, by UCLA professor Mark Kleiman.” Massing never discusses why he believes Kleiman’s blog is an example of good journalism. He merely mentions it in passing in his article “The News About the Internet."

In going back to my first post about Kleiman’s site, I see that I felt most of the blogs were very opinion-based and leaned to the left of the political scale. I also wrote that there was not much original reporting happening on the site. Unfortunately, not much has changed over the last month and some of Kleiman’s recent posts have been laughable. The most recent post, “Stay Classy, San Antonio,” isn’t even a blog or a real commentary. It’s just a picture of an ad for a business seminar and an embedded video. The goal of this post is to poke fun at the seminar’s lineup of people, which includes George W. Bush. In addition, most of the posts still relate back to reporting done by traditional media, eg. newspapers and television. However, some of the posts are commentary on fellow bloggers.

I’m not sure what Massing was referring to when he said that Kleiman’s blog discusses “drug policy.” Recently, the posts have been all over the place from the traditions of the Whigs to the energy industry. The only posts that relate to drug policy are one on medical cannabis and one a month ago that discusses some of the health care bill issues. Most of the posts are related to current events but there is not a specific focus on drug policy.

Overall my opinions of the blog have not changed from my initial viewpoint. I keep crossing my fingers that one of these posts will have some exciting new information but it’s not looking good.