The truth at the core of much often-tiresome blog triumphalism is precisely that the Post probably couldn't have vetted anyone as effectively as a blogospheric swarm. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I assume it was something like this: When Domenech got hired, hundreds or even thousands of bloggers and blog readers began looking back at his previous work. Maybe someone saw a phrase they thought looked familiar and started Googling. Once the first instance of apparent plagiarism was spotted and blogged, thousands more began looking through that same body of writing, perhaps with each individual only checking a few pieces, a few phrases at a time. The same task would have taken a committed body of researchers days, but because the task was what Net theorist Yochai Benkler would call highly modular and granular—capable of being broken up into highly fine-grained microtasks—a distributed swarm of bloggers was able to accomplish it incredibly quickly, turning up many more instances in a matter of hours. The blogosphere's virtues on this front are not necessarily the Post's defects...
Not that I feel sorry for the Post. Is there a job opening, then?
Posted by Walter at March 24, 2006 01:46 PMYes.
And the comments on the various threads at RedState.org were, ah, very impressive, by the way. If you want excuses for plagiarism, that is. (I'd never really looked at RedState before; what a cesspool, at least in those comments; lots of wishes for everyone "on the left" to die. Literally. And how they're not human, etc. I'm sure there were terrible things said about Mr. Domenech by some, but hardly by most nd nliberal/leftists/Democrats -- not that I'm taking RedState as typical of anything other than themselves, either, and not that it was everyone; but, jeez, the world would be nicer with a tad less demonization of homogenous masses of The Other, all around.)
Posted by: Gary Farber at March 25, 2006 05:39 PMI see no reason for the Post to be compelled to hire a right-wing blogger, but assuming they are, who would be your nominee?
Posted by: Walter at March 25, 2006 08:22 PMLibertarian or social conservative?
I dunno; I think people should nominate from their own crowd, not let people who disagree with them do it.
But -- and you will perhaps laugh -- I think it's fine if the WaPo wants to have a "Red America" partisan, but I don't think that it balances their professional journalists, whatever their biases, and that if they have one, they should have an overtly "Blue America" blogger, as well. Then they can both go at it, and I'll ignore them both or not or whatever (but these days I ignore most all of the most popular partisan blogs; all the stuff they point to -- Glenn, Kos, Atrios, whomever -- I find elsewhere anyway; and generally I don't care for the tone, though I do read other partisan commentators who are more "thinkers" than "linkers").
Anyway, Brady, the boss-man at washingtonpost.com (not the same company as the newspaper -- indicated that they'd go for someone with a "more traditional journalism background," this time round, though.
Posted by: Gary Farber at March 25, 2006 10:03 PMNo laughing, I think you're right.
The blogger would have to be a social conservative. There aren't many libertarians who would make good Republican apologists.
Posted by: Walter at March 25, 2006 10:44 PM