I usually have great respect for Frank Barnako, but his attacks on blogging are getting really tiresome. In what many bloggers characterize as an attempt to generate links back to his site, Barnako has another scathing indictment (Black Eye for Bloggers) of bloggers. [I’d love to link to this story, but the links are well hidden and there is no trackback on his site.]
This time he accuses bloggers of not doing enough original reporting. Perhaps he’s forgotten that blogs have become effective watchdogs for big media (like CBS.)
Perhaps he’s also conveniently forgotten some of the stories bloggers broke this year before old media: Trent Lott’s racist remarks, Kerry’s VP pick, “Rathergate,” the capture of Saddam, to name a few. Old media sure read those posts.
And then of course, he’s just plain wrong about blog traffic being insignificant. Wired magazine published a graph in Aug 04 detailing the number of inbound links received by various sites. On this graph, blogs like Dave Pell’s Davenetics and Instapundit are ranked higher, and get more inbound links than the official websites of Fox News and Reuters. And Drudge ranks above MSNBC, USA Today and LA Times.
I’m glad you’re talking about Barnako’s weird take and strangely hostile comments on blogs. There’s something really personal about his attacks that may be the reason he’s making so many dumb and inaccurate comments.
In addition, to your points about his blog comments, his brief attack on the hip hop community’s voter registration drives (there were many and P. Diddy was a opportunistic latecomer) in Wednesday’s “Bloggers Blew It.”
Focusing on the “Vote or Die” campaign, he says:
“Seems to me it’s dead. Where were the 18-29s? At Meetups? The Associated Press says exit polls found blacks made up roughly the same proportion of voters as in 2000.”
Since the highest percentage of voters since ’68 voted that means the turnout of black voters grew as did other categories. Fact check that, Barnako!
Peace,
Clyde
Hip Hop Logic