IN
THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS DRUDGE
The
Drudge Report
– Drudge is the father of us all, and, subsequently,
his site has become the road map of journalism on
the Internet. If you don't have a Drudge link, you can
get tens of thousands of visitors per week (we do), but
it's a lot harder. What I like is Drudge's unpretentiousness:
the look of his site hasn't changed much, if at all, ever
since he first put it up. There have been no grand "redesigns,"
no fancy graphics, no ever-more-complicated bells-and-whistles.
It looks like the html equivalent of what we used to call
a "carbonzine," back in the old days when "fanzines" (amateur
magazines) were printed on paper: banged out on an old Royal
typewriter and reproduced by using several sheets of carbon
paper. But there is nothing amateur about Drudge's numbers:
he gets millions of visitors (not "hits," but actual visits)
per day, while "professional" news sites run by suits
and staffed by hundreds (if not thousands, in the case of
Salon) don't even come close. The reason: his idiosyncratic
mix of the tabloidal and the serious. If war is coming in
the Middle East, you'll definitely read about it on Drudge
first (although Antiwar.com might beat him out by a few
seconds), and if there's a sex scandal involving the Powers
That Be, you'll get all the dirt there, too. The man writes
a good headline, and as for his choice of stories: if you
see it on Drudge, chances are that this is what people are
really reading about. Of course, as to whether that's
because of where it's posted, or because that's what they're
really interested in, is hard, these days, to say: and that
is one measure of his amazing and well-deserved success.
"Mainstream journalists" have nothing but hatred and contempt
for Matt Drudge – so you know he must be doing something
right.
THE
WORLD OF WORLDNETDAILY
If
anyone is even trying to fulfill the true potential of Internet
journalism, it is Joe Farah's WorldNetDaily.
To a large degree, Farah has managed to succeed: aside from
having a great selection of links, his WND team's
original
reporting on the infiltration of CNN by US military
"interns," and other scoops, have made his site one of the
brightest stars of Internet journalism. The commentary section
is tilted toward the conservative-libertarian side of the
spectrum, but it is broad enough to include voices from
the left – and ideologically idiosyncratic sites like
Antiwar.com. Foreign policy news usually gets a good slice
of bandwidth, but lately has taken a dive in quality due
to the Hal
Lindsey-pro-Zionist-Christian "End Times" spin put on
WND's Middle East coverage. Give it a break, guys.
In addition, if their columnist J.R.
Nyquist is an "expert" on Russia, then I'm Henry Kissinger.
But don't let this keep you away: it's well worth a daily
visit.
WIRED
INTO THE WIRES
The
major Internet-oriented wire services – AP, Reuters,
and Agence France Presse – each have their own peculiar
flavor: I learned during the Kosovo war that, in terms of
its international coverage, the Associated
Press is for all intents and purposes an adjunct of
the US government, and often merely transcribes the statements
of government officials rather than covering their actions.
I like Reuters
because they seem to keep stuff on longer, and their pieces
tend to be big on background. My favorite, however, is AFP:
there is no country too obscure but that it hasn't been
covered by Agence
France Presse: those guys are everywhere, and
the "spin" is decidedly European (i.e. independent). AFP
reports are generally detailed, filled with juicy quotes,
and are updated continuously: they are also big on covering
the internal political situation in various countries. UPI
is no longer a major news service, but can be useful in
garnering news and "spin" from the Moonie-Washington
Times wing of the Republican Party. There is no comparable
left-wing "agency" newsite, just as there is no left-wing
version of FreeRepublic, a pattern that illustrates something
important about the nature of the Internet and the American
political landscape – but that's another column.
THE
BRITS
Overseas
news
is a huge category, and there is no way to do justice to
this subject except by examining the Sources
page of Antiwar.com, and sampling for yourself the wide
variety of interesting sites that might give you a different
perspective on the news. Here are some of my old regulars:
I love the (UK) Telegraph,
not only for its determined Euro-skepticism – they
had great coverage of the Euro-tax protests – but also
for its wonderful custom of listing previous stories on
the same subject at the bottom of each and every news story,
all dated and in chronological order, no less. This is a
wonderful boon to researchers, and I don't know of any other
British paper that does it.
TOO
BAD ABOUT THE INDEPENDENT
My
British favorite used to be the Independent
– they were virtually the single antiwar voice in Britain
during the bombing of Yugoslavia, and backed this up with
plenty of good reporting. After the war, however, they went
through a "redesign" – even though there was nothing
wrong with the original format – and the results were
predictably disastrous. While the site looks snazzy,
with its graphic background of sculptured curves in bright
two-toned color, the organization of the news is very
poor: they do it by region, and they keep stories on forever,
which means you have to scroll all down the page, past whole
continents that don't really matter (that day), all the
while looking at dates – and the font is 8-point eyestrain!
This is really a shame, since the Independent does
some of the best Middle East reporting around – All
hail Robert Fisk! Banzai! – and we run a
lot of their stuff.
A
SAD FACT
Compared
to any American paper, of course, the
worst British tabloid is far more interesting and informative
– and more free to break certain politically correct
taboos – than most major news sources in the United
States, any one of which makes even a relatively boring
and prosaic British rag – say, the Guardian
– into an interesting read for an American. During
the Clinton years, you couldn't know the truth about a whole
range of subjects if you didn't read the British press,
and I'll let my readers draw their own conclusions about
that rather sad fact.
MIDDLE
EAST SOURCE
Since
the Middle East is in the news lately – and likely
to achieve even more prominence in the weeks and months
ahead, what with Israel's War Party in the drivers' seat
– here's a brief rundown: Ha'aretz,
the Israeli daily, is an island of reason, editorially,
in a stormy sea of religious and nationalist fervor, and
their op ed page is a good source for rational commentary.
MiddleEastWire.com
is a professional news operation, with a pleasing
and well-organized format to match their comprehensive country-by-country
coverage. For the Arab view of things, check out MediaMonitors:
some of the articles need more careful editing, but this
new site is promising.
I'ISLE
DE FRANCE
For
some reason, the French sites are all in French,
with a pointed lack of English translation. While they may
be making a valid ideological-cultural point (why shouldn't
those frogs resent the dominance of English as the global
lingua franca?) this means I can't recommend any
French sites – which is the way, apparently, they would
rather have it.
DE-SLANTING
THE NEWS
For
news and views from the former Yugoslavia, go to Serbianna.com,
a well-designed site (updated pretty regularly) that will
get you past the generally slanted anti-Serb reporting afflicting
most American and British news on this subject. The Serbian
Unity Congress has a great news page, but the way their
front page is set up its location is very obscure. Go here
for a good pick of news and views.
MY
FAVORITE LEFTIE
Aside
from hard news, the commentary section of my collection
of bookmarks is naturally tilted quite far to the right,
but my all-time favorite commentator is a leftist –
the incomparable Alexander Cockburn, whose Counterpunch
site is updated fairly regularly – but you really ought
to subscribe
to his excellent newsletter, of which only some excerpts
are posted – and whose New
York Press column is always a must-read. (Unfortunately,
the clue-less editors of the Nation don't make his column
for that magazine available on the Internet). He's my
kind of leftie – a man who can take out after professional
left-wing witch-hunters like Morris Dees, and expose the
inner rot of the Clintonian Left with entertaining glee.
MOST
POLITICALLY INCORRECT SITE
The
most politically incorrect site on the Internet, and one
of the most well-done, LewRockwell.com
has recently had the
honor of being attacked by the newspaper he once characterized
as the "War Street Journal" for daring to take on
the sacred cow of Lincoln: one would think that, given a
basic knowledge of the Great Emancipator's depredations
against the First Amendment, and habeas corpus
– in effect, the imposition of a virtual dictatorship
during the Southern War for Independence – would make
a critical look at him entirely uncontroversial. But that's
only if you were a time-traveler from, say, the year 1984.
Today, one is attacked – by alleged conservatives!
– for daring to question one of the chief icons of
American statism. It won't be long, now, before it becomes
a thought-crime on the Right to criticize Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. In any case, one of the sites I go to every morning,
first thing, is LewRockwell.com: and the good news is that
he has a whole bunch of young new writers who are spirited,
prolific, and, in the case of Jeremy
Sapienza, uniquely talented. Rockwell has the so-far-as-I-can-tell
unique talent of writing headlines that sum up not only
the content of the article, but give the reader his own
spin in a marvelously succinct and witty manner.
I
USED TO LOVE LUCY
I
used to go to Lucianne Goldberg's five-day-a-week column
on her site, Lucianne.com:
it has a great format of short, punchy paragraphs, each
devoted to a juicy news tidbit, usually some kind of trashy
gossip but often items of somewhat greater significance
than Linda Tripp's
latest travails. Yet she hasn't adapted well to the end
of the Clinton era, and her relentless focus on all-things-Clinton
amounts to a constant rehash of yesterdays news. Another
downside to her site: nothing is archived. Don't
bother, until she snaps out of it.
SULLIVAN
AND REESE: OLD RIGHT MEETS NEW LIBERTARIAN
I
may be unique in that two of my favorite commentary sites
are Charley
Reese's Orlando Sentinel
column, and Andrew Sullivan's wonderful new site, Andrewsullivan.com.
These two word scribes couldn't be more different, temperamentally
and culturally. Reese is a cantankerous Old Right kind of
guy, rough-hewn and blunt in his language, and a cultural
and political paleoconservative in the tradition of Mencken
and Westbrook Pegler. His incisive, acerbic prose is a joy
to read, although I think he's gone soft on Dubya. Sullivan,
on the other hand, is a cultural and political liberal (in
the older sense), who writes for the New Republic
(he is a former editor) and the (UK) Times, among
other places. A British immigrant to America, Sullivan is
Catholic, gay, and relatively conservative on economic and
some cultural questions. His writing has the smoothness
of one who thinks lucidly and therefore writes with unusual
clarity. While his columns and other articles are posted,
the main feature of Andrewsullivan.com is the "Daily
Dish," a running commentary on events and issues so well-written
it is downright addictive. Here you can see the continuing
evolution of the last honest liberal into a libertarian.
(A note: There is a "lite" version, and a fancy version
of his site: since I dislike bells-and-whistles, I've linked
the "lite" version. If you like graphical histrionics, and
have a fast Internet connection, go here
and click on "heavy.")
OH,
NEVER MIND!
For
commentary, I also recommend Etherzone,
which always has something of interest, and FreeMarket.net,
the premier libertarian news-and-commentary site, is an
invaluable resource. (Although I never understand why they
run only certain of my columns, and not others: I wasn't
surprised when they didn't run the 100th "Pat
Buchanan Is God's Gift to Humanity" piece, but even some
on foreign policy have failed to meet their standards: I
remember one piece pooh-poohing the rising media hate campaign
against Russia in particular, but, oh, never mind!)
THE
BEST NEWS SOURCE ON THE INTERNET
I've
saved the best for last. I have written about FreeRepublic.com
before, and specifically
about the evil lawsuit brought by two of the three major
centers of evil in the world of American journalism: the
Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
( For the identity of the third, go
here.) Founded by Jim Robinson, of Fresno, California,
as a conservative alternative to the corporate posting boards
set up by Compuserve/AOL/, FR is a phenomenon that
demonstrates the enormous political potential of the Internet.
Back in the early days of the Web, the "hall monitors" who
patrolled the corporate-sponsored bulletin boards were quick
to censor even the least expression of conservative sentiments,
especially where it involved criticism of Bill Clinton.
Angered, Robinson, a computer specialist who is confined
to a wheelchair, started his own news site. Since running
up the flag in the mid-1990s, Robinson has garnered more
than 50,000 registered users who post articles from some
media source and then engage in a running "thread" of commentary
on it. Traffic on his site is quite heavy, at times, and
I'm amazed that Robinson has been able to keep it all going
with relatively few glitches and little downtime. (Maybe
Californians should turn their electrical grid over to him.)
SMEAR
CAMPAIGN
Robinson
has created a virtual community, one that is taking on increasing
visibility: we all remember the "Sore/Loserman"
posters that turned up during Al Gore's coup attempt, and
the unprecedented conservative-Republican mobilizations
that did much to turn Gore back from the gates of power
– these things originated
on FreeRepublic, not in the offices of the RNC. The Other
Side is quite well aware of this, and a concerted campaign
to destroy the premier conservative site – and the
premier news site on the Internet – has been
going on for what seems like years. First there was the
smear job run by the ultra-liberal Salon in coordination
with Lucianne
Goldberg, a New York literary agent known as the "Bag
Lady of Sleaze," who had some role in L'affair Lewinsky:
Robinson "let all the Y2K, gun-nut, Jew-baiting crazies
take over and flame the plain-old conservatives," screeched
Goldberg, as she split from FR and set up her own site.
She and her coven of disaffected camp-followers were cited
by Salon as sources for charges that sound like a
prelude to the Southern Partisan-ization of John
Ashcroft: racist-extremist-homophobic, you name it, according
to Goldberg and friends there was hardly a rule of political
correctness that Robinson and the "denizens" of FreeRepublic
failed to violate.
GOOD
NEWS FOR SAN FRANCISCO RENTERS
It
was a flat-out lie, and it didn't work. In spite of Salon's
gleeful prediction of the site's coming demise – "Sources
with access to Free Republic's traffic data say visitors
and page views are down by at least half from their peak
a year ago," they gleefully reported in 1999 – FreeRepublic
prospers, while, today, Salon's stock has dipped
to all-time lows. With more than half the Salon staff
cut, a sudden uptick in the number of empty apartments in
San Francisco's tonier neighborhoods has reportedly caused
a small downturn in the city's rental market. Tee-hee.
BAD
KARMA
We
literally could not do our work at Antiwar.com without the
invaluable service provided by FreeRepublic. As Bill
Clinton was raining bombs down on the former Yugoslavia,
the "Freepers" (as fans of this site call themselves) were
collecting, collating, and culling the best, most accurate
(and interesting) news and background information on the
subject, an effort that thoroughly exposed Clinton's war
for the criminal aggression that it was – and we couldn't
have covered it as well without their invaluable help. Their
Foreign Policy section always has the latest, and
is filled, in addition, with interesting items from overseas
and specialized sources that makes it a virtual smorgasbord
for news aficionados FreeRepublic has survived, and
prospered, while its detractors have fallen on hard times.
Goldberg set up her own site, Lucianne.com, that used to
be interesting – I had Goldberg's dishy column of 'hot
links' bookmarked, for a while – but they post almost
no foreign policy news, and, indeed, news that doesn't come
out of New York gets relatively short shrift. If you want
to read the entire New York Post online, why not
go to directly to the source?
DOUBLE-STANDARD
But
while Jim Robinson's creation is a magnificent achievement,
the Powers That Be aren't about to let it stand. The Washington
Post/Los Angeles Times lawsuit is a looming threat:
the bad guys won the first round, garnering a $1,000,000
judgment against Robinson for "copyright infringement."
(In spite of the fact that plenty of left-wing and academic
sites reprint their stuff without links, and without lawsuits.)
You see, the corporate masters of our fate don't care if
something like hip-hop music, or the complete works of Britney
Spears, is freely available over "Napster" – they'll
gladly buy it out and reward its founders with bundles of
free cash because they want to promulgate their trash far
and wide. But one thing they don't want to broadcast
far and wide is universal unfiltered access to the news.
They also don't want the full record of their spin, distortion,
and downright lies to be widely available. That monopoly
they want to preserve, and they are using every legal means
to do it. Don't let them: contribute
to the FreeRepublic defense fund.
SHOW
ME YOUR BOOKMARKS
This
column is already far too long, and I haven't even put in
the links yet! So please forgive me if I left out a good
site: I know I'll think of it in a minute, but then you'll
no doubt write in to tell me how much messed up. However,
don't get all in a lather about it, because I'll be doing
these review columns every so often, and I can atone for
my sins then. In the meantime, to paraphrase Ayn Rand on
the subject of sex: show me a man's bookmarks, and I will
tell you his philosophy of life.
Please
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