Blogging Beyond the Men's Club (MSM Tries to Change 'White-Dominated' Blogs)

NewsWEAK ^

[GulliverSwift]

At a recent Harvard conference on bloggers and the media, the most pungent statement came from cyberspace. Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a response on the "comments" space of her blog from someone concerned that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media, "we will throw out some of the best ... journalism of the 21st century." The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of NEWSWEEK]. "It has taken 'mainstream media' a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."...

Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem?

Viewed one way, the issue seems a bit absurd. These self-generated personal Web sites are supposed to be the ultimate grass-roots phenomenon...

So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: "It's white people linking to other white people!" Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to "promote myself among those on the A list."

The top-down mainstream media have to some degree found the will and the means to administer such care. But is there a way to promote diversity online, given the built-in decentralization of the blog world? Jenkins, whose comment started the discussion, says that any approach is fine—except inaction. "You can't wait for it to just happen," he says. Appropriately enough, the best ideas rely on individual choices.

[George Smiley]

I don't know what the race of a given blogger is unless they put a picture up or otherwise self-describe.

After all, it was a cartoon in The New Yorker that put it best: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

[dirtboy]

"My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."...

What a pathetic joke. If you have internet access, you can blog. It's far more democratic than newspapers, where, as Mark Twain once noted, freedom of the press is limited to whoever owns one.

[Ben Hecks]

Apparently, Mr. Jenkins is not familiar with La Shawn Barber's blog:

http://lashawnbarber.com/index.php

[colorado tanker]

Lessee, the anti-freedom crowd failed to persuade us to regulate the Internet to tax it, so their new angle is we have to regulate the Internet to fight racism and promote diversity??? Like the energizer bunny, liberals just never quit trying to tax and regulate anything that moves, and lots that doesn't.

[NorthGA]

He should have also added those "wearing pajamas in the living room" to the list of offenders.

[sergeantdave]

If the blog is interesting, people will read it. If it's boring, people won't.

It's called the free market of ideas. If your ideas can't compete on the blogs, buy a billboard and whine.

[carlr]

The US population is by quite a large percentage white so does`nt it stand to reason that whites may make up a majority of bloggers.
Why do people think that any group that makes up roughly 25 percent of the population should have 50-60 percent representation when it comes to any group?The averages don`t support it.No one is preventing blacks,Hispanics or any other minority from cyberspace,the raw numbers will always skew toward the majority.
This is nothing more than a simple minded canard designed to convey victomhood,and thus absolve of responsibility,while at the same time demonizing people without any evidence or cause.

[kittymyrib]

...and nine out of ten rappers and hip-hoppers are black. Go figure. What an ignorant article! It's eating libs up that they are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

[Ragnorak]

"My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."

A source please Mr. Jenkins. One of the reasons the MSM is becoming more and more irrelevant is because they continue to throw out assertions as facts. If Jenkins had a belief or suspicion that the "blogosphere" (always hated that word...) is dominated by white-only males, it is incumbent on him to research this and get factual statistical data to verify it before opening his mouth.

Since, the paper he works for doesn't think this is a prerequisite to going to print it shouldn't surprise me that little bit of journalistic integrity is lacking in Mr. Jenkins. Of course it shouldn't surprise the Washington Post that their readership is lacking either.

[Richard Kimball]

I guess MHKing doesn't count, since he's conservative. Walter Williams, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, etc., probably get 3/4 of their readership from the blogosphere. Just more whining because the good ole liberal boys club ain't the center of the universe anymore.

[Tench_Coxe]

"Let me guess... We all have to run pictures of ourselves next to our comments so idiots like this know what color we are?"

In that case, my picture is of that space alien from Star Trek they used to show in the closing credits.

[ReadyNow]

Nice name for black bloggers: blaggers

There IS a very naughty version.

[ChewedGum]

Blogs truly are discriminatory...against the incoherent. (Unless someone is brilliantly incoherent...then they get really popular!)

Gum

[glorgau]

Yo. Hows come white rappers don't get no respect? They should be a law. Sho nuff - fo zizzle, sho sizzle.

[mhking]

The writer would probably have a problem with my "blog siblings," The Conservative Brotherhood

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[Semper Paratus]

Start with renaming "The Wonkette" to the "Honkette".

[rcocean]

How do we know Mr. Jenkins is black? Is there a picture?

How does he know the true race/gender of 99% of the people who blog?

This problem will go away if every starts indentifying themselves as black women on their web pages. It won't change what they write - but Mr. Jenkins will feel better.