Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Dead-Tree Blogger

Michelangelo Signorile goes after the holy cow that is Howard Kurtz:
[Mickey] Kaus, in an off-the-cuff but quite honest remark at a conference not long ago, admitted the reason why he often refrains from criticizing rabid sensation-stalkers such as Matt Drudge or Andrew Sullivan, even when he disagrees with them: He might not get linked to their websites, which bring Kaus traffic. A similar fear perhaps explains why the wannabe dragonslayers don’t go after Kurtz. The guy spends almost every day copying and pasting large chunks of their and a few other peoples’ work (complete with links to it) in his online column on the Washington Post’s website, and often writes them up positively for his column in the dead-tree version of the prominent newspaper, which can certainly help their careers. He’s highly selective about whom he quotes and whom he doesn’t. Kurtz’s online column in particular is not about the media in the broadest sense of the word; it’s rather about Howie’s World, a small handful of online magazines, newspapers and bloggers who are, for the most part, centrist to far right, with a few left-of-center tokens. He drives traffic to them, not to mention that he might have them on his CNN Reliable Sources show, which can also boost their careers and their publications.
Whoa! It just dawned on me: Howie is a dead-tree blogger! (Yes, I know this may have occured to others before. Maybe I'm just dense.)

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