Media rebels in the Internet age

Published May 01 2008, 02:10 PM by Ian Donnis

katzInside

[Above: Anchor Rising's Justin Katz, Marc Comtois, and Andrew Morse]

Thanks in good measure to the pioneering efforts of Rhode Island's Future and Anchor Rising, the Rhode Island blogosphere continues to grow in variety and sophistication. I look at this trend in this week's Phoenix:

There are, to name a few, locally based blogs for tech geeks and entrepreneurs, the legal community, same-sex marriage proponents, industrial designers, the young and irreverent, Democrats, and Republicans, and those concerned with intellectual property.

For communities sometimes overlooked by the Providence-centric media, the presence of sites such as Hard Deadlines, which focuses on Portsmouth, or RI’s Twelfth, which emphasizes that state Senate district, enrich the information landscape. ....

Picking up on a recent New York Times' story about the unexpected death, in one week, of two middle-aged bloggers, Lee Drutman, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California-Berkeley, used an April 15 op-ed in the ProJo to contend that the constant appetite of the blogosphere is bad for the body politic. ....

To be sure, there are shortcomings to be found on local blogs, particularly a periodic excess of personal attacks and a mix of bitchy and moronic comments, the short observations made by readers, that can be variously tasty or enervating.

Ultimately, though, Rhode Island bloggers rise or fall on their ability to present compelling information and trenchant points of view.

Marc Comtois, a regular contributor to Anchor Rising, sums this up well: “For me, writing a blog post helps me to strengthen my own thought process with regards to what I believe. If I’m going to pre-sent an argument for or against something, I had better be clear why I’m taking the stance I am."

Filed Under: activism, blogs, Media

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4 Comments

Marc said:

I just want to publicly say "thanks" to Ian for an insightful, informative and balanced piece of journalism. That was some trick given the raw material you had to work with (speaking for myself!).

May 1, 2008 4:09 PM
Ian said:

Thanks for the kind words, Marc, and for your self-deprecation. I found your comments very helpful.

May 1, 2008 4:24 PM
joe bernstein said:

Ian-I read your blog (obviously),Anchor Rising,PDD, and RIF.I post on all but the latter(they don't seem to want me to)-your article was very evenhanded and informative-it was also interesting to see faces to go with names. PDD has a nice aspect-they often depart from politics to examine some interesting stuff that isn't even controversial.

May 1, 2008 8:12 PM
Ian said:

Thanks for the kind words, Joe.

May 2, 2008 2:47 PM

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Media rebels in the Internet age

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