Citizen Bloggers
Jun 28th, 2005 at 6:31 am by Susie
Kos and Duncan go to Washington:
WASHINGTON Bloggers built their Internet followings with anti-establishment writings. Now they’re lobbying the establishment to keep their pastime from federal regulation.
As the man behind the Web log, DailyKos-dot-com puts it, one sign that you’ve arrived is that government regulators start wanting to poke their fingers into what you do. He’s among the witnesses testifying today on a Federal Election Commission proposal that would extend some campaign finance rules to the Web, including bloggers.
They portray the Web as an outlet for free speech that should develop unhampered by the government, despite its increasingly more sophisticated use for online political activities.
And here’s the Business Week piece. Have at it.
Somewhat off-topic:
A while back I was living in Milwaukee, near to a school called the Milwaukee School of Engineering. And they had a small radio station that you could only hear on the east side and then only if you were not too far north or too far south. And that radio station was VERY progressive/avant-garde; you heard stuff there that no other station would even dare play. Better than average college radio. It was great…
…until their audience got big enough to make it into the Arbitron ratings. I don’t mean big ratings, I mean #20 in a 25 station town. But that was enough to get the school’s Regents to give their own station a listen. And when the Regents heard what was getting played! Well, that was the end of the progressiveness of the station.
Like Kos said, the station had ‘arrived’. Too successful for their own good.