Jim Flowers' Radio Weblog

	Thursday, August 07, 2003

An interesting debate

Rush judgement

It's Rush vs. the Bloggers, says David Hill:

Although it is never safe to predict with any confidence what will happen over the next 15 years, I doubt that blogging or any specific bloggers will match Limbaugh¹s record-setting pace for gathering influence in the political process. Blogging lacks four key elements in Limbaugh¹s formula for success.

He lists show prep, production technique, entertainment value and audience bondage. Here's how he details the last item:

Fourth, Limbaugh builds bonds with his audience. He provides enough details about his personal life that loyal listeners know something about his parents, brother, wife, their cats, his golf game, his diet, his hearing problems, etc. Those revelations allow listeners to have a "friendship" relationship with Rush that solidifies their place in his daily audience. Though some nonpolitical bloggers write much about their personal lives, the most influential political bloggers reveal few intimate details about their personal lives, making it more difficult for their readers to bond with them.

Who is he talking about? The two most influential bloggers (by my lights, anyway), Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan, are both right wingers who reveal plenty about their personal lives and enjoy real working relationships with readers that are far more deep and useful than those Rush enjoys with listeners.

This is also hugely off-base:

The bloggers have a lot of work to do to catch up with or surpass Limbaugh¹s excellence in broadcasting and political communications.

Talk about a false contest. Dude: Rush performs on commercial radio. Bloggers write journals. Sure, both are personal, but the differences are huge. Hill isn't comparing apples and oranges here. It's more like mountains and buildings.

What Hill needs to grok is that blogs have changed the ecology of journalism, and the political ecosystem along with it. Rush lives in that ecosystem, and would be far wiser to take advantage of it than to fight it. AND logic, dude. Not OR.

Sure, lefty bloggers built the political bandwagon on which Howard Dean currently rides high; but that doesn't mean a righty blogger wagon isn't available for candidates on the other political wing. The warblogger wagon is already doing the job, frankly, and has been for some time.

Use AND logic and you'll see an enormous opportunity for complementary networking between right wing blogging and right wing talk radio — much more opportunity than there is on the left, for the simple reason that left wing talk radio is nearly an oxymoron.

Add RSS to Rush — and to all the new bloggers he can recruit among his 15 million listeners (a nice business opportunity there) — and his already huge power will multiply overnight.

Thumbs out

Looking for a ride after LinuxWorld today. Destination: Palo Alto. I'd normally take the train, but I've got four bags and would rather hitch, if it works out.

If you know anybody heading that way from San Francisco after 4pm today and think they could tolerate an extra passenger, let me know at doc@ssc.com.

We're all in this thing

OJR is featuring J.D. Lasica's series on Participatory Journalism. Lots of primo stuff in here. Required reading (and writing).

Also in OJR, Mark Glaser examines Howard Dean's official blog, which he busts for lack of apparent involvement by The Man Himself.

[Doc Searls Weblog] comment [] 8:10:19 PM

Test 123

Just moved the entire site to a new machine... let's see what broke

comment [] 8:05:26 PM

A good read

James Farmer provides this read link.

A Weblog Story

Good story about the power of weblogs: simple, straightforward, clear and as Mathemagenic points out, very much blogged & not a crappy publication... I like this way of publishing, it let's us all have a voice, it stops the bastards from keeping you down!

comment [] 10:21:26 AM

More Conference Blogging

For those unable to attend the MERLOT conference, Ten Reasons Why is providing excellent blog coverage.

comment [] 9:51:06 AM

Selling the benefits

As my friend Tim Merritt aptly put it -- "We need to stop explaining the term blog and just sell the benefits." A key benefit is RSS... You want news when it happens without spending your day surfing? You need RSS. And what platform delivers RSS in a friendly fashion? Blogs. And, how can you distribute your information in an efficient way? RSS? and How can you publish quickly and economically and get syndicated? Blog. Anyway, dig this piece in PCWorld that Winer has brought to our attention.

comment [] 9:40:00 AM

Enhanced Learning - continued

Bill Brandon comments at e-Learning on a prior post regarding "Gaming the Learners".

The challenge is in the design, and in keeping the game from becoming a distraction. If the point of the game becomes aiding rote memorization, then the only thing that has been done is to build a better dogcart. Interesting but still the wrong answer, or at least only a small part of the answer. I have in the past been as guilty of this as anyone in education, but I'm in a 12-step program for it (Pegagogics Anonymous). I hope somebody is doing some research before going overboard on this. In 35 years of developing, delivering and managing efforts to help people learn, I've seen too many fads come and go, and every time they went, a little more of our credibility as educators went with them. [e-Learning]

I think he is on the money and causes me to reflect whether we lose our focus in all the discussion about education. To paraphrase James Carville (hmm... why doesn't he blog?) "It's the kids, stupid.".

comment [] 8:45:17 AM

More e-vote news

Someone hit it on the head the other day when they said -- the paper system wasn't as secure as the electronic (hence all the cases of vote fraud)... it's all relative. Ever looked inside one of the old switch and lever machines?

New Security Woes for E-Vote Firm. A January source code leak revealed the innards of Diebold Election Systems' proprietary voting software. A new breach threatens to expose the company's business practices -- including its security methods. By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News]

comment [] 7:41:39 AM