Sixty-five years ago today, in a dusty south Texas town, our friend and colleague, Nurse Kelley (aka KelleyRN2) was born.
It was sooooooooo long ago, that there is no photographic evidence of the event but we think it went something like this.
Welcome to the Wild West, a personal Lord in the Flies Experiment in Flame Baiting and Anarchy
(PSST. Is this snark?)
This diary is a combination of several things, partly a response to Kos’ recent update on both the software developments on Daily Kos, and his comment on moderation. But it’s also a wider reflection on what’s happened to the principles of online activism, fundraising, citizen journalism and advocacy.
First off, this isn’t a gripe about the software redesign of DK4, or all the hard work put in by Kossacks and the IT team. On the purely visual level, it’s a stunning overhaul and most of us would feel a real downgrade to to back to DK3. This is about something deeper than active tags or group functionality. It’s about the principles of civility and online citizenship.
Neither is it an attack on the site’s founder. I have no personal gripes against Kos. Hell, I spend a lot of time on his blog for free (hope he gets some ad revenues). DailyKos is certainly the best looking, most active and advanced blogging platform I’ve come across. No other site on Left Blogistan compares with it, and UK equivalents look lumbering and antediluvian in comparison.
Though I’ve heard Kos is some kind of left libertarian, this is mainly directed to a wider set of ‘Technolibertarians’ who somehow believe that online networking will solve many of the political problems of our future.
So, no mon hypocrite lecteur, my opening line isn’t entirely snark. This has felt like the Wild West since the launch of DK4, like being a character in Lord of the Flies. What happened? Are there any lessons to be drawn from it? Will I get gift subscriptions? And is there any end to pie?
I am sitting here with my father giving him the skinny on the current state of this whole bloggy thing and I just want to say this about that:
Thank you, Mooses.
As a marketer I have noticed some interesting trends in recent months. Namely that traditional media (print, radio, TV) has started to decline in both consumption and advertising revenue. Here in Canada, budgets are being slashed by international accounts and belts are being tightened.
What is interesting is that not 5 years ago, media outlets were ‘throwing in’ internet advertising as a bonus with a traditional media buy. Well those days are long over. As a medium, the internet has exploded bringing with it much good and bad – especially in the political scene.
Well since the election I have attempted to return to the progressive blogosphere full force ahead and the results have been mixed at best. Not at the moose of course 😉 It sort of seems to me of what I imagined people were feeling in Europe at the end of WWII. People hobbling out of bombed out buildings, reuniting with their families, etc.
An enormous amount of Public Mass Media has been created this year in this transitional period following thousands of years of State-Controlled Media (see: “Egypt”), and dogging the heels of a few hundred years of Personally-Controlled Mass Media (see: “Rupert Murdoch”). It presages a period that is much discussed and yet to be determined in type and form, and the impact of Public Mass Media is a matter of a great deal of current debate.
Four years ago the blogosphere had produced a set of individuals who had broken onto the public Media stage (see: “Drudge”) and public forums that set the precedents for places like Motley Moose (see: “MyDD” and “DailyKos”). Today there are many individual contributors who have gained a fairly wide audience (see: “Ben Smith”, “”, “”) and a broad gamut of forums where Public Media is created by significant numbers of contributors. Four years from now there will be a pervasive public understanding of how Public Media shapes our culture.
Now, we stand on a brink and often wonder “Does any of this make a difference to what happens in the world?”.
Yes, it does.