We Want Media

US News & World Report’s Michael Barone is not only a conservative writer and author but also a blogger. Barone Blog has graced US News’ website since August 2005.

But Barone’s intertwined history with the blogosphere fascinates me. (Or maybe I am just a dork, which is entirely possible.)

One of Barone’s memorable pieces in US News was an article written in February 2005 called Blogosphere Politics, where Barone analyzes the effects of blogs on the 2004 Presidential election: So what hath the blogosphere wrought? The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media.

By August 2005, Barone himself joined the ranks of pajama-clad bloggers (although I somehow imagine Barone wears a suit to blog and maybe even to sleep, who knows?).

Now it is no secret, Barone is not a spring chicken. He is also not an independent blogger; his blog appears on usnews.com. In a sense, Barone falls outside of the typical blogger stereotype: he isn’t particularly young and he is tied to mainstream media.

So why on earth would he start a blog well before other mainstream media outlets like Time (January 2007) and even the New York Times (2006)? Barone says, “I'm not sure that I did [catch on to blogging earlier], but if so it's because mainstream media are so tilted to the left that I sought out information elsewhere--and found it on the blogosphere.”

It seems as though blogging began as an under-culture of those seeking news beyond traditional outlets. Though forms of blogging have been around for years, the 2004 Presidential election gave it the platform it needed to thrive. But lately, mainstream news and bloggers have been coming to a head, grappling with the role of bloggers versus traditional journalists—bloggers seem to escape the journalist code of ethics, and mainstream journalists are trying keep up with the immediacy of their blogger counterparts.

Barone straddles the fence, using blogging as a supplement to his work in print. “Is blogging journalism?” says Barone. “I suppose so. Certainly I would count my own blogging, which appears on usnews.com. But independent bloggers are journalism.”

Edit: Thank you anonymous commentator for bringing to my attention the difference between “fense” and “fence.” Spelling is, indeed, my Achilles heel.