January 07, 2003
Blog Flogging & A. J. Liebling
Today, the Chicago Tribune discovered Glenn Reynolds, the motor-mouthed keyboard wizard who is Instapundit. Most of the story profiles Reynolds - 42 years old, Knoxville law professor, father of 7-year-old girl, T-shirt purveyor - and explores his rise to the leader of the blogosphere's buzz parade. (Instapundit draws 75,000 to 100,000 page views daily).
In the story, USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro quips that Reynolds is "Sleepless in Knoxville," then offers the more sobering comment that Reynolds is a "linchpin" between old media and the Web.
Possibly, but I see any connection between the two as tenuous at best. More aptly, individually produced blogs such as Instapundit and the Talking Points Memo and collective products such as Gawker and The Morning News are new channels in the flow of information that bypass "mainstream" media - old and new. By ignoring the need to use institutional media of any type to broadcast their messages, bloggers have cast into obsolescence the definition of who is a publisher.
A.J. Liebling's oft-quoted remark that "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" was never more relevant, nor easier to make a reality.
Links
Instapundit
Talking Points Memo
Gawker
The Morning News