O TEMPORA, ETC. This post about blogging seems distinctly dated, as if June were a long time ago. Faster, pussycat, etc.

“Due primarily to cultural reasons, but partly to technological innovations, blogs tend to be less ‘team-player’ish, less willing to bury inconvenient stories or interpretations, than the major media. I stress that this is only a tendency, not a certainty. …Partly, this greater tendency to acknowledge what ‘the other guys’ get right occurs simply because blogs have less credibility than mainstream media. The New York Times, rightly or wrongly, enjoys a presumption that it will not bury the facts or report only half the story. A blogger has to earn his readers’ trust, and one major way of doing that is by refusing to play partisan games. As some blogs become more popular, and attain that presumption of credibility, I expect some of the more popular ones will stop bothering to respond fairly and accurately to the opposition; to some extent that’s already happening.”

I was also wrong about comments boxes as anti-partisan-polarization devices. Very, very wrong. That’s one reason I never bothered trying to tack comments onto this site, actually–most people’s comments boxes seem to become fight pits.

Anyway, despite my sunshiney tone in the June post, I think I was right about what blogging is when it’s at its best.