Following the News…
By Yglesias writes, in reference to the death of Sean Taylor:
It’s best to follow actual news stories on actual news sites
At the risk of using the tragedy of Taylor’s death to discuss a meta-blogging issue, this position on the news seems to be a massive point of divergence between left and right blogistan. The most useless type of post in all the blogosphere is the “why aren’t leftist bloggers writing about this important issue?”; here’s an example from Michael Goldfarb (whose work I generally like) regarding Burma. Part of the answer is that lefty bloggers don’t have the same fantasies about policy relevance that right wing bloggers do; we figure that since there’s not terribly much that the US government can do about Burma, we’re likely to be even less effectual. I think that we also have a certain degree of respect for our readers, in that we expect that people will know without being told that the government of Burma is bad. Note to Ace of Spades; blathering endlessly about a course of events that you can’t possibly affect, then denouncing others for insufficient blather of their own, is rather the definition of “preening in righteous indignation.”
I think, though, that the biggest reason there’s such a divergence is that lefty bloggers don’t imagine themselves as a replacement for the news media at large. While we complain relentlessly about the failures of the MSM, we also recognize that organizations like the NYT have access to resources we don’t in places we don’t, and can usually be relied on for at least a basic narrative of events. We supply commentary, color, and critique, but our role is essentially complementary. I don’t think that this understanding holds in right blogistan; if it’s not featured at Red State, Instapundit, or Captain Ed, then it probably never happened. Of course, this probably goes a very, very long way towards explaining why conservatives tend to have such a poor grasp of basic current events; when Fox News is literally the best that you’ve got, there’s bound to be a substantial gap between perception and reality.