{"id":468,"date":"2004-07-28T20:42:39","date_gmt":"2004-07-28T20:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:41","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:41","slug":"atrios_uncloaked_cui_bono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=468","title":{"rendered":"Atrios Uncloaked: Cui Bono?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know I’m late to this, but…Atrios<\/a> has come out<\/a>, and he apparently works for a policy house, specifically the Soros-funded Media Matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now I’ve been critical of Atrios (for tone and policy reasons), but he’s someone I respect as a leader and a powerful voice in the current dialogs. <\/p>\n

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with bloggers getting picked up by think tanks<\/a> and media organizations (yeah, but where are my<\/b> offers, anyway??<\/i>). I think that’s a good thing, and that if part of what blogging has done is to let some civilians move into the pro ranks, that’s neat. <\/p>\n

I think there’s more to blogging than that – but that’s another conversation.<\/p>\n

But there’s an issue here. (OB Lebowski: Hey! I’ve got an issue here!) As someone who stood behind a pseudonym for a long time (and sometimes kind of wishes he was still there…), I’ve got a huge issue with Atrios’ affiliation, however. And that’s because the nightmare of mine has always been that I would be accused of somehow trimming my blogging to my career, of – on one hand – claiming to write as a disinterested citizen, moved only by my passions and feelings, and – on the other – making a living doing advocacy and therefore by shaping public discourse.<\/p>\n

It’s not that people with jobs in advocacy somehow lose their voice, or that they are somehow recused from participating as citizens.<\/p>\n

But disclosure is important, because it allows people to weigh what you say and judge it based not only on its merit, but on the question of cui bono?<\/i> (who gains).<\/p>\n

I don’t know if Atrios was just picked up by Media Matters, or if he’s worked there for a year. I don’t know if he got the job because of his blog, or because of his academic credentials.<\/p>\n

I wish, more than a little, that I did.<\/p>\n

Because one thing about small-scale media is that – compared to the costs of doing business in Big Media – we could be bought cheap. Offer 30 of the highest-profile bloggers jobs for $120,000\/year – $3.6 million, a small ad buy – and you could shape political discourse for a year. I believe that the blogosphere would eventually correct for this; it would route around the problem. But I don’t know how fast the credibility of the blog universe would heal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atrios has come out, and he apparently works the Soros-funded Media Matters policy house. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with bloggers getting picked up by think tanks and media organizations – but there’s an issue here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}