Lowering the Tone

A while back I mocked the Globe's lack of courage in printing a column
about how bloggers were lowering the tone (and demeaning the discourse)
but refusing to allow comments on the column on their website.

But the truth is, I didn't really address the substance of the charge
that bloggers are lowering the tone because it's a complicated topic and
I wasn't in the mood to write a long post about it. Luckily for me, procrastination has paid off again, and Glenn Greenwald has written a masterful post on this very topic. Glenn's jumping off point is a Washington Post article about 'the angry left' but it doesn't take much imagination to see how his analysis applies to the Globe article by Russell Smith as well and to almost all of the media articles about blogs that seem to keep popping up with increasing frequency these days.

Says Glenn,

"Any time old, crusted, failing, dying institutions launch attacks on new and innovative competitors, it is an unmistakable sign that the attacking dinosaur feels threatened and feels its power slipping away. That dynamic, more than any ideological goal, is what is motivating the steadily increasing appearance of these types of hostile blogosphere caricatures masquerading as news articles. The reality is that the blogosphere need not be a hostile competitor of journalists, but can be a uniquely valuable research and analysis tool to supplement the governmental adversary role which journalists are supposed to perform.

But until they realize that, and as long as they continue to perceive that their stranglehold on conventional wisdom is being abolished as a result of the irreverent and increasingly substantive blogosphere, these types of "articles," devoted to the destruction of the blogosphere's credibility, are going to become more and more common - and more and more desperate."

He has lots more to say and it's all a great read.