Slashdot Mirror
ABC's 'People of the Year' - Bloggers
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "ABC News have declared Bloggers to be their 'People of the Year'. 'A blog - short for "web log" - is an online personal journal that covers topics ranging from daily life to technology to culture to the arts. Blogs have made such an impact this year that Merriam-Webster named it the word of the year. This week, their influence has become readily apparent.'"
The Man/Person of the Year is named by influence, not as an endorsement. Hitler, Stalin, and Ayatollah Khomeini all were Man of the Year too.
<John Stewart>
Stop, please stop butchering language. You're hurting our vocabulary and you make yourself sound stupid
</John Stewart>
I hate to do this, but...
If you're talking about Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, it's Jon, not John.
142 comments and no mention of blogger's biggest kill- perhaps when their importance was proven beyond a doubt.
I'm sure you'll all remember that a week or two before the election, Dan Rather went on 60 minutes with a story about how Bush allegedly got special treatment when he was in the air national guard. To prove this, CBS posted PDF's of supporting memos, 'from' the 70's, on their website.
Within hours, someone mentioned on freerepublic that the documents looked like they came from microsoft word.
Over the 12 hours, Littlegreenfootballs.com , with the help of powerlineblog.com blew the lid off the story.
Here's a detailed analysis later put together by a guy who pretty much wrote the book on computer typesetting: Dr. Newcomer
Bloggers showed that CBS had aired a story based on piss-poor forgeries made with MS Word 2003 default settings within hours, and then let so many people know about it so rapidly that there was no turning back for Rather and 60 minutes. His retirement this spring was announced within a month of this fiasco, IIRC.
Now, regardless of what you happen to think of Bush (Dr. Newcomer was a Kerry fan), basing a story on fabricated evidence is inexcusable. Basing it on such obvious forgeries is beyond inexcusable, and reaches into incredibly stupidity.
Bloggers busted 60 minutes on this. Huge story. And I'm suprised I'm the first one posting it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Congratulations to Hindrocket, The Big Trunk, and Deacon for producing such an excellent blog.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Wordpress and Textpattern. Google them.
Another link, to one of his first site entries:
e w/view1.html
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives/archivesvi
The date is June 4 1998. This is not the day of the first content on his site, and he had already been creating content for BYTE magazine for many years before this, but it's a sample of his archive.
He also has reader mail from back then.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/ancient/mail1.htm
Not surprising this got modded up considering Slashdot's skewed political slant. It's mostly because of bloggers that Bush is still in office and popular with the masses. Rathergate, anyone? Ever heard of Powerline or LGF?
Oh, I'm sorry, you think blogs are ineffective because you disagree with the world today. Nope, sorry--just because you don't like the effects of last year's blogs (i.e. Bush re-election, combatting bias of liberal media) doesn't make them ineffective.
Hell, it's only because of those blogs that a lot of people are even aware that Kerry never signed Form 180, the military document release form. You know, how the media kept blasting Bush for not releasing all his forms? And yet, meanwhile in the Kerry camp, he's never even signed the form? And the reason is because, according to his former superior officer, he was dishonorably discharged for meeting with terrorists in Paris (as documented in his war journal which he also would never release), and was then later formally pardoned by Jimmy Carter?
The blogs had to pick up the slack where the left-biased media was falling flat, too busy conjuring up fake memos for an "October surprise."
Mainstream media is based on making money catering to special interests (isn't it funny how the Washington Post blasts Bush for being on vacation during the tsunamis, yet doesn't say a word about Kofi Annan who was off skiing for three whole days after the disaster?). Blogs just do what they do because they can and they want to--balancing the flow of information out there. The mainstream media hates it because they don't control the airwaves anymore. In fact, now the public fact-checks them. And Dan Rather hates it.