Jane Hamsher: "Yearly Kos and the Myth of the White Male"

Morra Aarons — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:15:17 -0400

Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher wrote a very reasonable post defending the diversity of the political blogosphere. She writes:

The biggest blogger by far is Arianna Huffington, with 70 million page views per month. Markos is #2, and no amount of willingness to turn him into a white male is going to do that. Markos is Hispanic and that’s just a straight fact. John Amato and Duncan Black are straight white men, but John Aravosis is gay (and so are many of his contributors). FDL rounds out the list of top blogs on the left, headed by two women, although Pach — a Hispanic gay man — is also one of our primary voices. Digby is probably the most quoted and sharpest thinker around, and she’s a woman. I just had to roll my eyes when I heard people who don’t actually, you know, blog (and I’m sorry, but putting up an occasional post on the web site of your think tank/interest group/consulting firm’s website does not de facto make you familiar with the ins and outs of blogging or the blog world) talk about some cabal of straight white males who sit around a table and decide who does and does not get linked to.

Fine, good points. It's what Jane writes next that's more telling.

...I knew that with regard to the top bloggers, they wanted to encourage diversity. They wanted to be supportive and were anxious to find people who did what needed to be done in order to regularly link to them and give them traffic and exposure. That means several things, which Pach outlines in this post, but among them you have to post regularly about the topics that news junkies are interested in and you have to find a way to write your issues into those. It is difficult to get people to care about pro-choice, my personal signature issue.....Women and people of color have important perspectives to add to any conversation. We need more of both in the progressive blogosphere, it makes it richer and the insights deeper and more comprehensive. But Yearly Kos was prohibitively expensive (my hotel bill was $910) and that just isn’t a cost that bloggers who by and large do what they do as a labor of love can afford.

I interpret Jane's point as this: if you want to make it into the high ranks of the political blogosphere, you need to play by the rules. Write what "news junkies" want...write your issues into those." Jane's a star blogger and she's infinitely more influential and famous than I, but I still think this interpretation is narrow. Perhaps, to be a much linked-to political blogger one must play by the rules of the original (male) bloggers, but many bloggers don't want to cover such beats, and that's fine. They still have influence, and they can still be powerful voices for the netroots. They still vote, and they still cover politics. Online political citizens live and thrive beyond the small faction of uber-political blogs.

Only if we leave the comfort zones of the popular progressive blogrolls will online political action become truly effective. I think this is what sites like OpenLeft and Off the Bus at the HuffingtonPost are trying out...

Blogging While Female

Morra Aarons — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:59:52 -0400

Gender is seeping into discussion of the netroots in a major way. As today’s Washington Post quotes Yearly Kos Executive Director Gina Cooper on her conference: "It's mostly white. More male than female," says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. "It's not very diverse."

Indeed, there’s a growing chorus bubbling up online. I think Garance Franke-Ruta summed it up brilliantly with the title of her recent Yearly Kos panel: “Blogging while Female.” Political blogging, while female, is not the norm.

techPresident - Blogging While Female - Comments

Jane Hamsher: "Yearly Kos and the Myth of the White Male"

Blogging While Female