There
follows a small section on exactly what blogging is:
"A BLOG OFTEN offers
a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the
Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide website, although there are as many unique
types of blogs as there are bloggers. "In a little more than five years, the
phenomenon has gone global, with a reported 51 million participants," he
reports, always generous with statistics (see below for more, on unemployment
in this country)."
His
initial homage to the power of the finest language is poignant as he descries
what it has become in the hands of the media: "I am a lover of language, a
journalist trapped in a profession where words can be wooden, predictable, and
recycled endlessly. News clichà ©s encourage conformity and co-optation."
Maybe
so, but wordplay abounds in his writing: witness this May 24, 2011, blog title:
"Why Are We Banking on Banks for Economic Recovery? HBO's "Too Big To Fail'
Should Have Been "Too Big To Jail.'" --This blog, by the way, is a must read.
And in section IV, on the Occupation,
Schechter capsizes the positive connotations the term has taken on so recently
to admit that "Wall Street is occupying us."
Compare
to this his brainchild: " [We]e need a jailout,
not just a bailout."
Another
memorable bit of wit? "It is the banks that are robbing us." The sayings of
Chairman Dan live on with such captivating creativity.
And
speaking of an even more prominent Chairman, there is an ironic quote from Mao
taken out of context ["to flush out critics and then destroy them"]: "let a
thousand flowers bloom." Writes Schechter in praise of bloggers as he initially
contextualizes their work as a powerful vehicle of the people, a "thousand
flowers" in itself: "Today's citizen journalists are in part out to improve and
in some cases supplant a media world that has lost credibility and is in
desperate need of being shaken up from below."
Blogging is how we are fighting back most
effectively, our pens mightier than any other weapon we have tried. The irony
is that "they" read us--it's damn good writing for the most part--to understand
us better; you must know your enemy before you vanquish them. And our wall of
words doesn't stand a chance against their Wall Street, which Schechter calls
the new capital of America or, as he puts it: "our growing
wall of debt":
"[T]he wall I later ran up against was more than a Street; it was a tower of indifference. I was asked: How could you be so negative about what was then an economic boom enriching so many? Was I a doom and gloomer, or an alarmist? I was told: 'your apartment has gone up in value. Relax?'
Schechter's life in
particular is one with world events. His mind is always synthesizing the
external into his own thinking. He is a 24/7 blogger. We can depend on him not
only for the real news but what it means at so many different levels. He does
our thinking for us, but we can trust him, unlike others who aspire to this and
wreak such havoc.
Mind control, no. Danny Schechter, yes.
[Blogothon]
collects the work of one of the "early" bloggers who has used the medium to
offer a critical counterpoint and counter-narrative to the daily news in a
daily blog. (p. xix)
A counter-narrative, as explained in
depth in the final blog of the collection, consists of one or more other
versions of an event [usually] reported by the mainstream media, be they
network or cable. Schechter is its personification.
Online since 1986, Schechter became the
News Dissector for a second time [he was initially a famous radio commentator
in Boston in the seventies, when he first acquired the epithet]
"[o]n September 11, 2001, literally as the
World Trade Center towers collapsed, I started writing what I thought would
be a column focused on news coverage; it quickly turned into a blog, because it
was updateable . . . as often as events changed."
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