Sign in  |  Register

The New Criterion

The New Criterion is probably more consistently worth reading than any other magazine in English.
- The Times Literary Supplement

Features

December 2012

The "Blog Mob" revisited

by Joseph Rago

On the impact blogs and the Internet have on journalism.

Editor’ Note: This essay is the second installment of a series on the challenges posed by the digital revolution to the world of culture. We are delighted to acknowledge that the Hertog/Simon Fund for Policy Analysis provided critical support for this series.

Sometime in 2006, freshly graduated from college and newly employed as a junior editor at The Wall Street Journal, I decided it would be a good idea to publish my musings about the Internet. The op-ed quoted Joseph Conrad to the effect that newspapers are “written by fools to be read by imbeciles” and suggested that blogs are the new newspapers. It turns out that people do not like to be called imbeciles, bloggers in general and imbecile bloggers in particular.

The piece, which carried the headline “The Blog Mob,” was a sensation, a controversy, and, finally, a mistake. It is worth recalling not because it has muc ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase

Subscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions)

Subscribe to TNC (Online only)

Purchase article credit and clip this article

If you already have an account login first

Joseph Rago is an editorial board member for The Wall Street Journal. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing.


more from this author

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 31 December 2012, on page 4

Copyright © 2013 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The--Blog-Mob--revisited-7495

E-mail to friend


The New Criterion

By the author

Vale, Vidal

by Joseph Rago

On Gore Vidal's Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 1964 to 2006.

Doubting Thomas

by Joseph Rago

A review of "Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations."

You might also enjoy

Ave atque vale

by Donald Kagan

Upon his retirement from Yale, Donald Kagan considers the future of liberal education in this farewell speech.

If you see something, say nothing

by Andrew C. McCarthy

Changes to the AP stylebook show that we’re blinding ourselves to the connections between Islamic extremism and terrorism.

Clearing London's fog

by Pat Rogers

The enthralling history of eighteenth-century London.

Most popular

view more >

Webcasts

Andrew C. McCarthy talks Islam
Andrew C. McCarthy covers Boston, the Blind Sheikh, the Arab Spring, and Turkey in his remarks at TNC's board dinner.


Poet George Green reads from his award-winning Lord Byron's Foot
George Green reads from Lord Byron's Foot, his collection of poetry that won the 2012 New Criterion Poetry Prize at a Friends & Young Friends event.


Celebration of the Life of Robert H. Bork, 1927–2012
From the memorial service for Robert H. Bork on April 9, 2013 at the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC.