How do you feel weblogs have changed the way that people interact with "news" and "the media?"

April 10, 2002 10:10 PM

Hullo. Hate to bother you all like this, but...

I'm a student currently in the first part of my sophomore year at Northern Kentucky University. In my English class, we were given a very broad research paper, and I decided to narrow mine to weblogs. In particular, one aspect of weblogs: weblogs & the media. So, I'd like anyone who has an opinion on the matter to answer this one question:

How do you feel weblogs have changed the way that people interact with "news" and "the media?"

Thanks for reading this far.
posted by philulrich to general weblog-related at 10:10 PM (31 comments total)

Eh, this is not the place for you to conduct research. MeTa is not anyone's personal audience. Sorry.
posted by BlueTrain at 10:18 PM on April 10, 2002

Who the hell are you BlueTrain to dictate policy? You've been here three months.
posted by SweetJesus at 11:08 PM on April 10, 2002

How do you feel weblogs have changed the way that people interact with "news" and "the media?"

^For one, they're surlier.^
I don't think you're going to get too much out of what you'll get here, and a lot of people are going to resent it, though not deservedly; they were right to resent when that one person tried to get research info for her company, but this is different.
There are a lot of articles, written both by media folk and bloggers, that will provide you with a more well-thought-out perspective.

So, people, any suggestions?
posted by j.edwards at 11:54 PM on April 10, 2002

(Just want to throw in that a similar sort of thread to this was in fact met with some opposition and no little annoyance not many months ago, although that was over in the blue.)

any suggestions?

Nothing comes to mind - sorry.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:03 AM on April 11, 2002

On topic:

I think it is only natural that Phil Ulrich came to the largest concentration of bloggers and blog readers to ask for help with his weblog related homework research.

While many can interact with the old form of news distribution in a more utilitarian way, weblogs do not lend themselves to this specific kind of interactive use. General populace never really "interacted" with the "news" or "the media." Most of us are not movers and shakers. Our involvement, if any, is limited to being asked questions in the "man on the street" segments; and more frequently, as a representative number in the ever increasing opinion polls. What has weblogs done for the "news" and "the media?" It has made some news items more popular and widely read among its readership. Now everyone and their mother reads everything written by Andrew Sullivan, Thomas Friedman, and Dave Eggers. Even mundane or crackpot news items linked by some high trafficked blogs can become Yahoo!'s most read news of the day.

I'd suggest that you buy these two fine books: The Weblog Handbook, by blogging pioneer Rebecca Blood; and We've Got Blog: How Weblogs are Changing Our Culture. These two might be the only relevant titles available right now for your bibliography.

Off topic:

I hope this thread does not get deleted. Closed to new comments, maybe; but not deleted. One of the major reasons for repeated breach of conduct here is that many have a vague notion of what is a "MeFi-crime," but does not have an example to see.

While it is never spelled out in as many words in the MetaFilter guidelines, asking for homework help is not within "the spirit" of MetaFilter. Same is true for research-polling or asking for work-related research/help that your boss is paying you to do. Judging from the inconsistencies in enforcing the values of this spirit, I'd say that this is not an outright crime. It just violates the spirit.

User Dark Messiah posted the same "do my homework" post in both MetaFilter and MetaTalk. Both were deleted. His only comment in MetaTalk was from that deleted post. User ryryslider's "do my homework" thread was also deleted. User luriete posted a "do my job" thread in MetaTalk. Though that thread was not deleted, the members stayed away from doing her job for her. On the other hand, when user Perigee posted a "do my job" thread in MetaTalk, the members here were more than happy to do his work for him. Even Matt sometimes volunteers to help out search skill handicapped journalists find what they are looking for. These are only a few in a very long list of incidents; I hope is sufficient to make my point.
posted by tamim at 12:11 AM on April 11, 2002

Who the hell are you BlueTrain to dictate policy? You've been here three months.

The maxim, "Argue the post, not the poster" really is a fantasy, isn't it...Kinda like, "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all." It's just fluff...BS we tell ourselves to make others feel good, meanwhile we snicker in the background.

Here's a perfect example of why people are reluctant to say anything, especially newbies. Hell, if I've only been here 3 months, I can't know anything. I don't actually read MeFi; I just post here and remain ignorant to the policies, right?

I would love to use MeFi as a research audience for a bunch of projects. I would love to interview people here, take down some demographics, and create some comprehensive data so I could pay my rent or buy that new stereo I want. I could...but then I'd be abusing my privilege as a poster. I'm here to contribute to the best of my ability and learn what I can from others. If I make a profit, or gain research material from you, I'm extracting more than I'm contributing, and I'm taking advantage of a site that someone maintains out of sheer enjoyment.

I meant no offense by my post; this is simply not the place for such requests. There is no scientific study here. All we have is a college student taking advantage of resources that aren't his.

What to do instead? E-mail specific posters and see if they're willing to help you out. There are hundreds of posters here with great weblogs who love helping people. The trick is to find them.
posted by BlueTrain at 1:10 AM on April 11, 2002

well considering I copied and plagarised my way through university, i'll be happy to find something someone else has written and email you with it later phil.
posted by Frasermoo at 1:24 AM on April 11, 2002

BlueTrain, I don't think the problem is with your newness or lack thereof, so much as with your constant Alexander Haig'ing and your incessant use of the word Royal "we" to express your opinions.

There's at least a chance that 50,000,000 MeFites can't be wrong, right?
posted by yerfatma at 5:06 AM on April 11, 2002

philulrich: Homework questions are just about guaranteed to elicit an unpleasant response online, especially when the question is as broad as yours is. Focus your research and do a bit of leg work before you ask questions, and, when you ask, be a bit more precise.

In particular, since you're looking at the relationship between blogs and the media, you should have a good look at the media-related blogs. Not every blog does that. Mine certainly doesn't, at least not most of the time. But there are blogs done by journalists and pundits that are a running commentary on the media (Andrew Sullivan, Virginia Postrel, Mickey Kaus, Josh Marshall, etc., etc.), plus personal blogs by ostensibly non-media types that focus on the media or on current events (e.g. Steven den Beste). The mainstream media has covered these blogs, often in a critical way (since they're the competition), and this coverage has often been linked to here under the "general weblog-related" category.

In other words, there's a lot of material out there to look for. Go and do some reading before you honk some of us off by asking questions.

Also: what tamim said.
posted by mcwetboy at 5:39 AM on April 11, 2002

philulrich: with a little imagination it will be possible for you to circumvent this rule; its just that your question is pretty general. I don't even have a problem with people that flat out ask for help for something, so long as their question is phrased in a way that brings up a weblog related issue that's of interest. Then, you're not violating any rule (actually, there is no rule, I don't think, its just that people don't respond well to questions that ask too much of them.)

Find out a little on your own. Formulate an opinion, and return. "I'm writing a paper and I'm saying this about weblogs and the media." You're bound to get a response.

Also: Weblogs and the media? Hmmm. Check out andrewsullivan.com. He wrote something great on P2P Journalism a while back.

posted by xammerboy at 6:21 AM on April 11, 2002

good advice from j.edwards, tamim, bluetrain, mcwetboy, and xammerboy. to which i would add the following:

email the creators of your favorite weblogs. i'm assuming that you have some level of familiarity with weblogs if you're endeavoring to write a paper about them, so you must have some favorites that you read regularly. i guarantee that if you email the bloggers with specific questions about your topic, most will be delighted to respond.

as a general rule, people who maintain weblogs are lonely freaks who rarely leave their apartments and are therefore starved for human contact. they will write back if you email them.

hell, i once complimented goneill on something she said online and now the bitch is stalking me.
posted by mlang at 6:34 AM on April 11, 2002

people who maintain weblogs are lonely freaks who rarely leave their apartments

Make that never, now that our grocery store delivers beer.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:37 AM on April 11, 2002

Perhaps some metatalk searches would provide good starting points.
posted by Dean King at 6:50 AM on April 11, 2002

There are hundreds of posters here with great weblogs who love helping people. The trick is to find them.


Well, i like to hurt people under the guise of helping them, but thats for me and my doctor to discuss. I like these posts and I don't think they break metalk policy. Like you said the trick is to find them, well he found them. A metafilter paper just sounds so cool. Maybe I'll answer his question if I have time. There's another thread about a study of online communities. The more attention weblogs get the more of this we're going to see.
posted by skallas at 7:11 AM on April 11, 2002

The maxim, "Argue the post, not the poster" really is a fantasy, isn't it...Kinda like, "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all." It's just fluff...BS we tell ourselves to make others feel good, meanwhile we snicker in the background.

Here's a perfect example of why people are reluctant to say anything, especially newbies. Hell, if I've only been here 3 months, I can't know anything. I don't actually read MeFi; I just post here and remain ignorant to the policies, right?

You missed my point entirely. When you say Eh, this is not the place for you to conduct research. MeTa is not anyone's personal audience. Sorry., you speak for 14000 or so members. You've been here three months. Even if you've been here for three years, you really don't have the right to speak for all 14000 or so members.

My point was, is that if there's a problem with his post, Matt will probably delete it, and let him know via e-mail. You don't need to be a policy-nazi about it. It's really not your place to tell this guy what he can and can't do. It's not your website.

Just leave the policy to Matt.
posted by SweetJesus at 10:26 AM on April 11, 2002

just a note: the weblog books can be ordered now from amazon, but will actually be shipped in june.

but yes! by all means go buy them now! ;)
posted by rebeccablood at 11:27 AM on April 11, 2002

This is what we have to work with here:

MetaTalk is a discussion area for topics specific to MetaFilter itself, or weblogs in general.

So why is this post any less worthy of MetaTalk than the one Mo Nickels started today? Or the one from April 6, where someone asks for web hosting advice? I'm asking not to be snarky, but because I honestly don't get it. I'd love to hear some of you elaborate on this. The subtleties of what to post and what not to post in MetaTalk have eluded me so far, which is why I've never posted anything.

Philurich's post here, while annoying to some because it's asking for help with homework, actually does have something to do with weblogs (and resulted in some great advice, btw). So in my bizarro world, this is the only one of the three that I've mentioned that does deserve to be here, which seems to be the complete opposite of what everyone else thinks, since no one commented about inappropriateness in either of those other threads. Can someone please enlighten me?
posted by iconomy at 11:44 AM on April 11, 2002

I completely agree with iconomy (I usually do, I find...*waves*), except I would emphasize a little more how asking for help with your homework on the net never works.
posted by rodii at 12:10 PM on April 11, 2002

I think the category you linked into here "General Weblog Related" holds a plethora of information for you. Searching for key terms is probably your best bet for finding specific info.
posted by sadie01221975 at 12:23 PM on April 11, 2002

The assumption that Blue Train has only been here for as long as his account is a flawed use of logic.

To wit: There have been several black out periods where a person could read and not post and even with that, there are some people who lurk for a very very long time before deciding to register. Hence the Web vernacular lurker.

A real question is how do we judge a poster and his/her/its post and/or viewpoints? Quality of posts? If so, how many? Quantity of posts? If so, how many must be germaine to topic, in our opinion? Length of membership? Any posts required (I recall someone noticing that one of the dual number members has never posted)? See all the possible variables? I haven't even covered them all.

See, when there is a loose community, a community in name only, it seems sometimes, inferred rules, set up by individual members, while not necessarily invalid, run the chance of being held by one member only.

You.
posted by Dagobert at 12:35 PM on April 11, 2002

Me?

What did I do?

*points surreptitiously at him*
posted by rodii at 12:56 PM on April 11, 2002

wow phil, i visit your site every now and then, and never picked up that you lived/went to college so close to me. whose the goose? (hint: it's me). anyway, i can't really add anything that hasn't been said by anyone here, but i'll support mlang's suggestion that emailing your favorite not-too-busy authors with some of your questions would be the best way to do this...

huh? me? no, not me.. him

::points at dude::
posted by lotsofno at 1:01 PM on April 11, 2002

This is actually quite amusing to me because I focused my Senior English Seminar on MeFi, linguistic conventions and policies, and communities/rules/roles, and In one MeTa thread, I've almost seen everything I wrote about.

I've been meaning to e-mail Matt a copy of the paper, but I keep forgetting.

philulrich, feel free to e-mail me about help--while a) it's been a year and b) the focus of my research was different from yours, I'd still be happy to offer resources, theory or places to look for either.
posted by one.louder.ash! at 1:02 PM on April 11, 2002

rodii - it works both ways, absolutely. I've actually found myself nodding my head in agreement with many of your posts. *waves back*

Philurich - the about page of MetaFilter has lots of news/media sources in which MetaFilter has been mentioned, and some of those articles have lots of good quotes.

Upon preview - one.louder.ash - How nice of you, and I would love to see that paper!
posted by iconomy at 1:10 PM on April 11, 2002

ah, i guess he didn't take to some of the more criticizing commnts.

and according to his post, apparently there's a rumor going around that we're elitist bastards. who knew?
posted by lotsofno at 1:11 PM on April 11, 2002

So why is this post any less worthy of MetaTalk than the one Mo Nickels started today? Or the one from April 6, where someone asks for web hosting advice? I'm asking not to be snarky, but because I honestly don't get it. I'd love to hear some of you elaborate on this. The subtleties of what to post and what not to post in MetaTalk have eluded me so far, which is why I've never posted anything.

Well, here's the problem, and maybe that would clear things up.

The post I let through about the reporter was borderline, but metafilter related, so I thought it was ok (barely). The Mo Nickels thread looks ok, as it would help researchers studying online community (though maybe designforcommunity.com would be another good place to post it). The post about web hosting wasn't deleted simply because I was stuck on a dialup at home for the past couple weeks. I deleted a thread about macintosh tech support, a thread about how to register a domain, and a few other general ones that are barely weblog related. I saw the web hosting thread for the first time about 12 hrs after it was posted and a dozen people had already posted suggestions, so I let it stand.

The bottom line is that I don't want MetaTalk to become a place to discuss technical support issues with non-metafilter related topics. I also don't want to have a "water cooler" chat area where people can talk about anything and everything.

The "do my homework for me" and "do my paid job for me" threads can work, if the people posting them do their best to position the question and make it specific, but also generalize it so it's about webloggging. I'm doing something about this though, I hope to soon be launching a site that deals with weblog-specific issues, and it will act as a community site to discuss weblogs in general, taking this category away from metafilter entirely.

In this case, it's pretty borderline, as it seems like a few google searches and daypop searches would get you a lot of information, not to mention the category here about weblogs, the press section of MetaFilter's about page, and the new microcontent news site which is devoted to this subject. The person asking it sounds knowledgeable, but if they were a pro-journalist, the question would probably be much more specific, and easier to answer.

I think one good answer to the question is in the microcontent news article today (linked on metatalk today). The author talks specifically how they now get their news from the reporter's personal blogs instead of the newspapers they work for. I do the same thing. I use MetaFilter as my filter of what news stories to pay attention to, as many others do, even going back two years. There have always been news articles here, and at some point, reading metafilter just replaced a trip to cnn.com for me. The major issues in the news come through here, either as directly linked news articles, or as interesting sites devoted to specific topics that are news-worthy.
posted by mathowie at 1:12 PM on April 11, 2002

The mostly negative reaction to this question was sort of predictable; see How To Ask Questions the Smart Way — especially under homework questions, STFW, and "On Not Reacting ...". A somewhat harsh but generally accurate take on what happens when you ask questions in an online community.
posted by mcwetboy at 1:35 PM on April 11, 2002

Let me make this clear. I never asked for someone to "do my homework for me," as so many of you have said already. If I wanted you to do my homework for me, I'd've asked it. Rather, in an attempt to get as many sources as possible, I thought I'd poll this group of people who, apart from the rumors I'd heard, were a rather intellectual group with some intelligent things to say.

And, for several of you, I haven't been disappointed. I got some rather interesting links and opinions, and I thank you for that. But I'd like to know exactly when so many people turned into nitpicky, grouchy policemen of MeTa (and probably MeFi). No, wait--I'll probably get flamed for asking another question.

Thanks for what's been said so far; I'll take my chances elsewhere from now on.
posted by philulrich at 7:01 PM on April 11, 2002

phil, mcwetboy's last link says it all, it's just a nature of a community, coupled with the vague rules of the place:

"Remember: When that hacker tells you that you've screwed up, and (no matter how gruffly) tells you not to do it again, he's acting out of concern for (1) you and (2) his community. It would be much easier for him to ignore you and filter you out of his life. If you can't manage to be grateful, at least have a little dignity, don't whine, and don't expect to be treated like a fragile doll just because you're a newcomer with a theatrically hypersensitive soul and delusions of entitlement."
posted by mathowie at 7:37 PM on April 11, 2002

Thanks for the thorough answer, Matt.
posted by iconomy at 7:45 PM on April 11, 2002

mathowie : I hope to soon be launching a site that deals with weblog-specific issues, and it will act as a community site to discuss weblogs in general, taking this category away from metafilter entirely.

Cool! I wonder if it will be under the Meta-umbrella™, or an entirely separate 'brand'?

posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:52 PM on April 11, 2002