How netroots bloggers are influencing Occupy Wall Street
For my latest article at PBS’ MediaShift, I interviewed activists from Firedoglake and Daily Kos to explore the various ways netroots bloggers are influencing Occupy Wall Street: But though the decentralized structure of OWS has helped its public perception, its sluggish decision-making has made it ill-prepared for one major obstacle: winter. As the protests stretch...
I don’t think this is the response Arianna Huffington was going for
Hey Arianna (and Dear Patch): We won’t be taking you up on that kind invitation to work free for your large corporation … I would add that Fridley is my hometown, and I wholeheartedly agree with Arianna’s assessment that it’s a great place that’s very worthy of serious news coverage. But relying on volunteers isn’t...
Can a local blog scoop traditional crime reporters?
In my latest article for Harvard’s Nieman Lab, I profiled DC’s Homicide Watch, explaining how they fill in the gaps in local crime coverage by following the motto, “Mark every death. Remember every victim. Follow every case.” Comments like this continue to flow in as residents of the D.C. area gravitate to Homicide Watch, a...
Is this a victory for Glenn Greenwald and bloggers?
The BBC is reporting this morning that Bradley Manning, the soldier targeted in the WikiLeaks scandal who has been held in isolation at Fort Leavenworth, has been cleared to be held as a medium-security prisoner. According to Fort Leavenworth Commandant Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, Manning will be treated like any other prisoner … Now, Manning...
Legally, the Huffington Post is no different from Facebook
In an extremely Kafkaesque interview with Paid Content, Jonathan Tasini, who somehow woke up one day and realized Arianna Huffington hadn’t been paying for his blogging for the past five years and decided to sue her, was asked about the legal precedent a successful lawsuit would set for other platforms. “What about other sites, like...
The dangerous precedent of suing Arianna Huffington
Update below Jeff Bercovici reports at Forbes that a group of Huffington Post bloggers are filing a lawsuit against the Huffington Post, claiming they deserved to be paid for their work. This lawsuit follows a proposed boycott from the Newspaper Guild, who urged HuffPo’s bloggers to stop writing for the AOL-owned site. Bercovici shows absolutely...
Daily Show co-creator erupts at feminist blogger during Netroots Nation panel
When I heard that Lizz Winstead, the co-creator of the Daily Show, would appear on a blogger “snark” panel at this year’s Netroots Nation, I wondered if the group would address the elephant in the room. It had just been a little over a month since Jezebel — owned by Gawker Media, one of the...
Dave Weigel and the rise of young libertarian journalists in DC
In the wake of Dave Weigel’s resignation from the Washington Post after a number of his emails were leaked to online news outlets, dozens of bloggers and journalists penned posts honoring and defending Weigel’s journalistic integrity. One such defense was written by Julian Sanchez for The Atlantic’s website and is notable not because it’s different...
An internet activist’s war against police brutality
“I’m not a cop hater.”
Carlos Miller felt the need to tell this to me after we’d spent nearly 20 minutes talking about his blog’s role as an internet refuge for those who have been blighted by the law and have the video evidence to prove it. Naturally, as someone who has become semi-famous for exonerating...
Is the link economy suffering from inflation?
If Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that he plans to withdraw his news content from Google’s index is any indication, the value of the link is still a topic of debate. Proponents of the “economy of the link” who consider the hyperlink to be the ultimate form of flattery — from which revenue will flow — argue...
New CNN “Belief” blogger says he’ll give voice to atheist and nonbeliever issues
It’s been more than two years since CNN’s Paula Zahn Now showed “Beliefs Under Attack,” a segment featuring a Mississippi couple who had been ostracized from their community because of their disbelief in God. Following the segment, Zahn hosted a panel that included two Christians and Jewish conservative columnist Debbie Schlussel but no actual...
Lawrence Lessig says White House did not recruit him to defend Kagan from blogger critics
The Harvard law professor told me he misspoke when he said in a Bloggingheads video that “the White House is encouraging me to talk about the Kagan nomination.”
A few weeks ago I interviewed Salon’s Glenn Greenwald after HuffPo reported that the White House had dispatched allies to respond to Greenwald’s criticisms of Supreme Court nominee...
