Reflecting on naked capitalism. Assignment 4

Yve Smith’s naked capitalism is not a part of Massing’s piece.

I’ve made my own conclusions about blogs and their appeal based on Yves Smith’s naked capitalism. In my original post, I’ve listed some of the subjects covered by Yve Smith, subjects that include the banking industry and the Federal Reserve. Not all people are interesting in the subject and neither are people required to understand them. Yves Smith’s blog specializes in banking industries and does not try to cover all news according to region as legacy news does. Because the audience is more concentrated, Smith has some freedom in what she writes, and she expects her readers to be able to follow without too much trouble.

From what I have seen, Smith does not have any original content, but the point of her blog was never to offer news content. Naked capitalism is a site that provides analysis to what has been going on. For example, Yves Smith would criticize the New York Times and then point out the contradictions that come from their coverage. The point of Smith’s blog was to provide analysis of the goings on and hopefully bring people closer to the truth by doing so. This is, of course, similar to editorials and is completely biased.

I almost feel as if Yves Smith’s blog is a check on legacy media. People can take in all of the news content from legacy media, and there are little for people to differentiate what is false and what is true. By analyzing news content, and hopefully revealing certain inconsistencies, this may effectively put pressure on legacy media to do quality coverage if their quality did somehow fall.

In this sense, I think blogs deserve praise. I don’t see blogs and citizen journalism to replace legacy media, but I think they can co-exist to keep the quality of news coverage high on both citizen journalism and legacy media.

Weekly Standard/Massing Assessment

In Michael Massing’s “The News About the Internet,” Michael Goldfarb is labeled as one of a “battalion of Israel defenders.” Looking at Goldfarb’s The Weekly Standard, it is a fair assessment that a lot of page time is dedicated to Israeli issues. Israel was at least partially the subject of 9 out of the 30 blog entries on the main page of the site. However, it is also a fair assessment that this subject deserves as much attention as The Weekly Standard provides.

Interestingly, one of today’s blog entries is entitled “Dropping the Pro-Israel Pretense.” It discusses how an organization called J Street, a self-described “political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement” has dropped the use of the phrase “pro-Israel” on the final day of their conference in Washington, D.C. because they did not want to run the risk of alienating students.

The blog goes on to point out that the J Street conference is presenting anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli speakers and that the Israeli ambassador to the United States refused to attend the event because of these positions that the organization has taken.

Without getting into political or religious debates, Israeli-American relations are significantly important to both nations and if it takes being labeled an “Israeli defender” to bring to light many of these problems, The Weekly Standard should accept the label with honors.

The Weekly Standard blog: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/

ProPublica - Assignment 4

In Assignment 1, I said ProPublica is a legitimate news Web site that does original and comprehensive coverage of national issues. I still think so. ProPublica is just as legitimate as The New York Times or The Washingtojn Post. The difference is that, other than being just an online publication, ProPublica is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization. The journalists who work for ProPublica are along the lines of those who work in other respectable news publications.

Also, while ProPublica does cite stories from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press and others, it still does its own investigation, interviews and reporting in other articles. For instance, an article entitled "Energy Department Boldly Goes Where No Man Has Gone Before," it doesn't seem like the writer did much of the reporting herself. She, instead, cited reports/stories done by The Times, The Post and AP. However, in other articles, such as "Car Dealers Protected from New Consumer Protection Agency," the coverage is, I think, very much like what we can see in other legitimate news publications.

ProPublica is also doing a good job of tracking down how the stimulus funds are being spent. The Web site is continually updated when significant amount of stimulus funds have been spent, how they were spent, who received the funds and why the funds were given. The articles about this are also supported by interviews with credible sources from all sides of the issue. Like I said before, ProPublica's articles can be text-heavy because most of its coverage are comprehensive. However, it does utilize other tools such as info graphics that would make readers understand better how, for instance, the stimulus funds are being spent so far. On the main page, for instance, is an info graphic called "Stimulus Progress Bar," which is on the main page of the Web site.

Overall, I think ProPublica is living up to what it says in its "About us" section. It continues to provide full coverage of national issues, and it continues to provide well-written and well-reported investigative pieces.

The Kaus Files- Massing Praise

"The two bloggers most commonly recognized as the medium's pioneers, Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan, are, remarkably, still at it," said Michael Massing.

Kaus started his blog in 1999. Massing goes on to say that, "both still use the style they helped popularize—short, sharp, conversational bursts of commentary and opinion built around links to articles, columns, documents, and other blogs."

While some may criticize Kaus, their arguments don't seem to be very valuable. Kaus does a very good job at staying pretty fair in his arguments- something that Massing noticed as well.
When I first began following Kaus for the assignment, I was shocked to hear from people that he was a liberal. Aside from him calling himself a neoliberal (which I had to search for), I wouldn't have thought he was a liberal because he just ripped Kerry and Obama in postings from a few years back. He also came down on conservatives on things like affairs, lies, and cover-ups. After discussions with my friends, we concluded that if he was criticizing Obama and officials, it was because he was criticizing them fairly on things they weren't doing or enough of. I think this approach towards his blogs is what makes him a very pioneering blogger.

Perhaps it is his journalistic experiences or education, but he writes his postings as near perfect additions to Slate. He properly cites things when most bloggers dont and adds a very intelligent analysis to them. If he is questioned, he clarifies himself. He always links additional resources and examples to back up what he is saying as well- another thing Massing praises him for.

This is a recent piece on the White House vs. Fox Network topic in which he offers advice on evaluating media.

1) Neutrality--Are they attempting to be "objective," trying to serve the "public interest" in some balanced way, or are they ideologically (or otherwise) driven in a way that inevitably colors their coverage--what topics they pick, what 'experts' they rely on, etc.

2) Independence--Whether they are biased or generally neutral, can somebody--a political party, a Mafia family, a government-- tell them what to do?

3) Accuracy--Are they committed to not telling untruths?

4) Fairness--Do they try to present all sides, even if it's only to take on an opponent's best argument (as opposed to his worst)?

5) Discipline--Do they tolerate dissenting voices within the organization--even when those voices are effective? Will they assign major stories that will cut against their interests and arguments?

6) Willingness to Suppress: You can have a commitment to accuracy, even a commitment to going out and finding and publicizing the truth for its own sake--but what happens when that commitment collides cataclysmically with your other, ideological purpose? The New York Times has a high commitment to accuracy, for example--and it's so big it almost has to be relatively tolerant of individual deviation. But would it endanger the Democrats' Senate majority by printing a series of damaging exposes of a leading Democratic Senator shortly before an election?

As long as Kaus has been running his blogs, he manages to stay accurate and relevant.

Mondoweiss Revisited

Mondoweiss, a blog about politics in the Middle East, posts mostly commentary about news and events pertaining to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Michael Massing wrote, "With its unrelenting criticism of Israel, his site has angered even some of his fellow doves, but it has given voice to a strain of opinion that in the past had few chances of being heard." Weiss surely cuts into Israel with his postings everyday. His drive is clearly to give voice to the left side of the conflict.

According to Massing, Weiss went to Gaza and filed reports on his encounters there. Without reading that I wouldn't have known that Weiss does original reporting. Since I've been reading Mondoweiss there hasn't been any original reporting just commentary. However, this week Weiss was at the J Street Conferenece doing some original reporting.

He wrote, "Eldar described apartheid in the West Bank, and Hagai El-Ad, leader of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said that the Supreme Court of Israel has signalled that it is going to endorse separate roads for settlers and Palestinians as a legitimate function of the Jewish state."

Weiss is thus providing an insider's view of the conflict at the conference by blogging about what he sees as newsworthy. The idea that Israel is going to create separate roads for Palestinians and Jews was appalling and probably wouldn't have been kown about this soon without Weiss's reporting.

Weiss's criticisms of Israel are important because his viewpoint isn't found in larger media networks. Weiss can break news about this issue because he follows everything going on and its personal to him as Jewish American. Weiss's passion is felt in his posts about Israel as in today's above the fold post in "Israel, we have a democracy problem," Adam Horowitz, fellow blogger of the site, broke the news that there are more Palestinians than Jews between the river and the sea. This isn't something that would be seen as newsworthy but Mondoweiss makes it relevent to the reader.

I think Weiss does a great job on covering issues relating to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict through commentary but there needs to be more original reporting from key locations and events. I think his best work is done when he provides news rather than commentary.

60 Minutes- Revisit

Since Massing did not cover "60 Minutes," I am revisiting my first article and seeing how it holds up to my current feelings on the site.

In my first assignment, I wrote that I felt as though it was a boon that the "60 Minutes" page was written by actual journalists instead of bloggers. I still feel the same way about that. Blogs can be informational and entertaining, for sure, but I'm certain the majority of people trust news from journalists more than they do bloggers. So, as such, the fact that the site hosts legitimate news articles is a good thing for internet surfers who want to know what's happening in the world.

In addition to that, though, it should be noted that the written articles are still unsuitable for the net. A lengthy, four-page article is virtually unreadable online when one considers how short people's attention spans are and the fact that it takes longer for people to read off of a computer screen than from a print paper. So, while the articles may be well written and in-depth, fewer people are reading them than if the articles were trimmed down to at least two pages. At least the videos are there as supplements.

In my first post, I also commended the website on being organized but not taking advantage of the medium. In a way, I'd like to reverse that remark now.

The home page of "60 Minutes" is fine above the scroll. It shows the top stories of the day in the center of the screen, and above that it lists tabs for access to other categories of stories. However, below the scroll it looks like everything has been thrown together. Or rather, it looks like my closet when I'm trying to clean in a hurry. Sure, everything is in a place, but that doesn't make it any less of a mess.

I believe that everything underneath the "recent segments" category should be cut out considering that they are already covered in other tabs. Or, if it is necessary to contain those stories on the front page, I believe it would be a better idea to have a list of titles off to the left hand side of the screen so that the reader can choose whether or not to look into some stories in greater detail. If this were implemented my only concern would be whether or not the screen was too busy and cause reader confusion and make them not know where to look.

And, as for me saying that the site doesn't take advantage of its medium, well, it doesn't. But I may have been too harsh the first time around. The videos are an excellent feature. Presuming the user has a decent internet connection, then watching the videos are an efficient way to learn about what's going on. But the four-page articles are a serious weak point for the site.

Emptywheel - Assignment 4

It is a bit difficult for me to truly touch on some of the things brought up by Michael Massing, as the political atmosphere as of late has not allowed Marcy Wheeler the opportunity to show of one of her true talents - live blogging. In his review, Massing writes that he really began paying attention to Wheeler after she began live blogging during the Lewis Libby trial. While I have yet to see any recent examples of this, I trust that her live blogging is much better and more thought out than anything I've seen so far. My biggest concern with Wheeler's blog is the fact that everything seems so rushed. It's as if she spends a good amount of time tracking down reliable news sources, and only minutes formulating her own opinions.

While Emptywheel lacks sophistication, Massing's appraisal of the site is pretty dead on. It is a blog, created by an educated, but not formally trained woman, who speaks to what people want to read in a non-formal, but semi-professional manner.

"(The Internet) offers a podium to Americans of all ages and backgrounds who are flush with ideas but lack the means to transmit them," Massing wrote in his review, The News About the Internet.

While I wouldn't persoanlly read her blog every day, Massing was correct in placing her on his list, as she writes about important topics such as torture, the auto bailout and politics. She is clearly a force in the main stream media, and has been quoted in The New York Times.

"I first learned of Wheeler last April, when her name appeared in a front-page article...about the release of Bush-era memos on interrogation techniques," Massing wrote. "Through a close reading of the documents, Wheeler was able to conclude that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times in one month. This revelation was quickly picked up by The Huffington Post, and soon thereafter it showed up in the Times."

In the end, I feel that Massings review is correct. Wheeler seems to take her blogging very seriously and definitely steps up on big issues. My only issue is with the day-to-day posts, which act as space fillers till a reals tory breaks and she really starts blogging.