Tim Blair

Oh the blogosphere was pro-Dean? a- ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA!

Isn't it traditional, once you're in a hole, to stop digging? Beam's realationship with the Blogosphere is like Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. He is a very silly man. I fart in his general direction.

I'm a Dukakis booster.

Isn't it traditional, once you're in a hole, to stop digging?

It seems that the tradition is to call for dynamite.

And his mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries. Phuth!

(or was it the other way around?...)

I can't help but think that Beam's column is the stupidest thing I've read in a good long while.

Where's my chicken suit?

Damn, damn, damn!

I bow to your might, Mr. Timminator...

Coming up from Alex Beam:

The Newfangled Radio - Why It Will Never Replace Newspapers

Semaphore- the new media?

Oh the HORROR! Oh the humanity! We DARE comment on newspapers. I mean aren't they supposed to be the final word?

The chuckle is, this is the result of feverish mental exertion by Beam. Surely he was determined not to again show himself the fool as he did two years ago. I'll guess he still blames his brain fart on the blogosphere for reporting it. Maybe he has outfoxed us all and just desperately wanted to boost his e-readership numbers.

We have to give him credit for being right about one thing. Newspapers have editors; these uphold the high standards of print journalism. Thus, with an error-free product there is nothing substantive for denizens of the blogosphere to criticize.

I'm glad he called it to our attention. Otherwise I wouldn't have noticed.

It may help to understand the arrogance and superiority this 'journalist' displays to know the Boston Globe is owned by the NY Times.

I've wondered, being from the Boston area, if some of our Globe 'journalists' think they will move up to the NY Times if they show the same qualities (arrogance, superiority, etc.) as their journalistic siblings at the Times?

I hope some journalism professor, at some school, uses columns like this one to illustrate how to write and look like an arrogant idiot.

I was under the impression that it was the 'real journalists' writing for Time, etc. that had elevated Dean to god status much more than the blogsphere had. Sure, there were blogs that were pro-Dean and raised lots of money for him. These blogs constituted what % of the blogsphere? How many blogs were there pointing out Dean didn't have a chance?

I've always heard that the advantage of writing a letter to the editor is that you can display your idiocy to thousands of people at once instead of just those in your immediate area. Beam manages to do this on a regular, routine basis. Does the Globe keep him on for the humor factor? Down home we'd say he has his cranial cavity so far up his anal aperture he needs a plexiglass bellybutton to see which direction he's facing.

Mr. Beam's thesis should be summarily rejected unless he can prove that he typed out his article on a 1970 Olivette and that it was manually typeset. Otherwise...feh.

I know I'm heartbroken after shilling endlessly for Howard Dean on my blog. No wait, I made fun of Dean and his Deaniacs so I guess I'm not heartbroken at all. Beam has me all confoozled.

I'm guessing it's the "commenting upon" part that has Beam's panties in a wad about blogs. He pines for the good old days when he could write any crap he wanted with only the occasional letter to the editor to contradict it. Now he has to deal with this newfangled internet and its unwashed masses who can say whatever they damn well please about his writing without it being filtered first through the Boston Globe editorial staff. Dark days for the likes of Beam who want the conversation with their readers to be one way.

Don't you remember when Lileks posted that pro-Dean remix on his site? I mean, that was supposed to help Dean, right?

Around ten or fifteen years ago, the American media was obsessed with cable television; it was "too much", programming was "too specialized" (the Food Channel, History Channel, sports networks, etc.)

Many prognosticators saw the complete and utter demise of the Big Three networks (ABC,NBC, CBS; FOX was just starting up).

Talk show host David Letterman would elicit a laugh every night by taking a straightface contrarian view and saying, "Cable is dead--It'll never last!" His obvious self-interest in protecting his monopolized audience made the joke work.

Alex Beam seems to be apeing Letterman except that he doesn't get the joke. And thus he demonstrates why I and so many others turn to the internet for news and the "blogosphere" for analysis. Tim Blair's blog is like Martin Luther to Beam's corrupted print journalism church.

You touched the keyboard!!!!! You're working for Dean.

That WHOOSHING sound was Beam's trousers falling to his ankles just before he tripped, face first, into the keyboard. The result was this article.

What is that crank talking about? My presidential ticket is now, and will ever be, Bill & Opus on the Bloom County line.
BTW, Beam, go take a look at your paper's circulation figures from ten years ago and compare them to now. No one ever said you'd get buried quickly, just that you'd get buried.

Currently:

"daily circulation of 474,845 and a Sunday circulation of 704,926"

claim made at:

https://bostonglobe.com/advertiser/mrktdata/bostonglobemrkt/circulation/circulation.stm

1998:

Daily circulation: 470,825 Sunday circulation: 748,726

http://www.nytco.com/pdf-reports/circulation-BG.pdf

So, roughly the same Daily circulation, and a 6% drop in about 6 years in the Sunday circulation (I was 1 of them!)

Population growth in the NE area served by Boston Globe in the same period: Tough to find easily, but a good estimate for the period is 3-4% growth.

So, yes, the Globe is perhaps being somewhat slowly buried. Hopefully, if this happens, it will be like the proverbial frog in hot water: by the time they notice it will be too late for them...

Hah HA! Beam's article is available on the internet. Dean's candidacy was organized via the internet. Ergo, Beam is a Dean supporter! The logic is rock solid. Well, at least as solid as Beam's reputation for getting the facts straight, and since he's a reporter for a major newspaper we can take that to the bank.

Seriously though, what's this guy's beef with the internet? Did it kill his father and burn his farm to the ground or something? Ya know, if someone had the same sort of beef as Beam has with the internet with, say, the power grid, the phone network, or the interstate highway system they would be branded as a grade-A nutzoid and sent to a mental health facility for observation, if not confinement.