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Thursday, February 10, 2005 |
In my morning scan of the local news, I noticed that Baltimore Sun
columnist Dan Rodricks had a piece on the reports concerning the firing
of Governor Ehrlich's former congressional staffer for his role in the
fomenting of rumors about Mayor Martin O'Malley's marital
infidelity. The article is here: The politics of humiliation and hurt spin nicely on Web.
I took umbrage with one of the main points of his article:
"The Internet is wonderful, but it has created a vast diaspora of the
unengaged, the isolated and the cynical. These are not people
interested in building bridges or communities. They are about tearing
down, and trashing anyone they don't like on some petty, personal
level. They are the other side."
Since I was at the office much too early this morning, I decided to
fire off a note to Mr. Rodricks. To summarize, one of the things
I mentioned in my email was that since the web has a low barrier to
entry--anyone who wants a blog can get one for free and a domain name
is rather inexpensive to acquire--it is easy to encounter the isolated
and single-minded types he identifies.
For each of these unengaged and single-minded types, however, one
encounters bloggers who do contribute to the public discourse.
There is a community that is growing, and that community is actively
engaged. I pointed to the recent discussion on the role that
blogs and bloggers play in the workplace as an example of useful and
interesting discourse. I also mentioned the role that bloggers
played in challenging the veracity of CBS report of President Bush's
National Guard service.
Finally, I mentioned the growth of bloggers as citizen journalists and
the growing attention citizen journalism is gaining. I also
pointed him to the interesting discussions that were taking place at
the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference that took place last month.
I think this, in some respects, is just another example of the problem
that mainstream media has with respect to the blogosphere.
12:48:55 PM  
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I decided to purchase the home jersey of my beloved BU
Terriers. For those of you that do not remember, that is the
white jersey from yesterday's post. Thanks to ACDub, Fool, Broad-Sheet, and messy_hair_girl
for their opinions. Amazingly, they were all in agreement.
Look for me to be wearing this jersey come Monday, cheering BU on
against Northeastern in the Beanpot. You know you want a tourney
like the Beanpot, Broad-Sheet. ;-)
Now, I need to find out where to watch it in Federal Hill/South Baltimore. My quest for college hockey continues.
12:24:04 PM  
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© Copyright 2005 Jason J. Thomas.
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AIM: jjtaim MSN: jasonjthomas@hotmail.com Yahoo! Messenger: jasonjthomasumd
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