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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Spin and all that
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
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Here's Scoble on a Trippi (former Dean campaign manager) speech, wherein Trippi blames the media for much of what happened to the campaign. That's amusing. Why? Because that sort of spin is what happens in the media. Journalists are looking to simplify and "boil down" a story. Recall what they did to Dan Quayle, for instance. The same thing happens with the tech industry stories - look at the coverage of Oracle's attempt to buy PeopleSoft, and you'll see a heavy focus on Ellison - because that's a way to simplify the story. This is just the way it is, and it's hardly unique to politics or the Dean campaign. You can see it even in word choice - companies try really hard to make a name common, but then cry foul when said term becomes commoditized (by journalists) into overall usage (think xerox).
The interesting part is how and where blogs play a role in this. In politics, blogs didn't help Dean shape the general view of him - because most of the electorate isn't reading blogs. On the other hand, I think blogs such as Scoble's are doing a fair amount of good for MS - because a meaningful percentage of the developer community is reading blogs - in particular, many of the trade press journalists are reading blogs. The difference with the political world is pretty clear here - Dan Gillmor reads blogs, and writes one himself - the pundits you see on the Sunday shows almost certainly do not. That might change, over time - Virginia Postrel and Andrew Sullivan are examples of pundit blogging - but it's not (yet) enough to influence the voices on tv.
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