Shock and Shaw

Posted by Paul Anderson | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 @ 10:50 PM

Joe Shaw, good progressive that he is, might not appreciate that pun, but, hey, I like irony.

But what I really like is his approach to his new blog ocprogressive.com. 

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Joe, who helped manage Debbie Cook’s unsuccessful campaign to unseat Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, co-created and launched the blog this week with Gus Ayer, a former Fountain Valley City Councilman and Heather Pritchard, a popular Daily Kos diarist. And while I may not always agree with the politics what I admire is that Shaw joeshawweb.jpgand his teammates are eager to do some of their own journalism instead of just commenting on someone else’s work and linking to it.

Too many blogs these days just deconstruct some news organization’s content and spew out a bunch of conspiracy theories. Most of the time I think, who cares what you think? And that’s because a lot of the bloggers aren’t very informed. I like the Atlantic bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, because they’re journalists and they have informed opinions when they comment on someone else’s work. That’s called perspective.

Also, Joe thinks his blog might be able to fill in where the mainstream media can’t. Unfortunately these days a lot of news organizations have had to cut back, like we have, and can’t get to every committee meeting or dig as deeply as we’d like to in some issues. But a blog like OC Progressive can do that. For instance, Ayer is writing a six-part series on “Orange County’s Failed Toll Road Experiment.” Much of the information will come from Ayer just digging into meeting minutes and other resources. With his background in government that’s a plus.

Shaw, interestingly enough, has a short journalistic background. He earned a degree in journalism from Cal State Los Angeles and got to work at a community newspaper in East LA where his job responsibilities, amazingly, included writing news articles and selling advertising. That’s a big no-no because it can lead some advertisers to figure you’ll take it easy on them if they happen to make negative news and they’ll expect positive coverage for non-news stories that amount to free advertising. The wall between advertising and editorial is supposed to be sacrosanct, but sadly it has eroded in recent years.

“There’s a need for some kind of in-depth reporting, particularly for the blogs in the Orange County area,” Shaw said, adding they’re too often not based on fact and more on opinion. “We don’t want to do that. We’d rather have real journalism as much as we can do.”

And with his background in journalism he’s well aware “you can just call people up and ask questions. That’s something a lot of bloggers don’t do. The difference between blogging and journalism is you actually have to do some work to get something to post. Blogs are so prevalent because it’s so easy.”

The OC Progressive team also aims to make it a participatory site like Daily Kos; anyone can jump in and start a diary. If it’s obscene or otherwise objectionable it’ll be dragged down as soon as possible.

Shaw, Ayer and Pritchard also hope to develop a “farm team” of progressive politicians in Orange County.

As for the politics, expect a lot of fact-based pragmatic solutions to problems. Shaw is clearly ticked off by ideologues who stubbornly cling to their politics at the expense of problem-solving.

“You don’t have to be a Democrat to be a progressive,” he notes. “There are Republicans out there like that, and they’re the kind of Republicans Orange County Republicans don’t like.”

Oh, and don’t be surprised if there’s a dash of snark in there.

“If there isn’t any snark in it … let’s face it, that’s what the most interesting blogs have,” Shaw said, laughing.

Maybe he won’t mind that pun, after all.

7 Comments »

  1. Comment by Art Pedroz — January 28, 2009 @ 11:55 PM

    Attacking the local blogging community for not being journalists is ridiculous. In most cases we don’t present ourselves as being journalists. I

  2. Comment by Art Pedroz — January 28, 2009 @ 11:58 PM

    I make it clear that our blog is opinion. Now do we break news once in awhile? Sure. That is going to happen. Most newspapers are understaffed and quite frankly bloggers can get to the news faster.

    I welcome Joe Shaw and his bloggers but I don’t see the reason to put down the other bloggers in town.

    Ultimately the people of Orange County will decide whether blogs are worth reading or not. And for most blogs attracting readers comes down to opinion and wit. Let’s see if Shaw’s bunch can provide that, consistently.

  3. Comment by Dave — January 29, 2009 @ 12:15 AM

    As a blogger myself, blogging is not necessarily reporting, and the Internet should not be only for journalists. The whole point is that everyone is an expert at something, and they should be encouraged to write what they know (hey, their novels will almost certainly never be published…).

    Fast-moving events in the world are constantly occurring and one never knows what expertise will be required to provide insight to an insatiable Internaut. Case in point: FiveThirtyEight.com came out of nowhere and gave incrediblie insight to a historic presidential campaign. I am sure that initially there were only a few of us who were interested in the actual statisitics involved in Nate Silver’s method, but eventually, this Website rivalled the New York Times in readership.

    Nate Silver is not a journalist, but I’d say he gave very informed opinion…and perspective.

  4. Pingback by What makes a political blog successful? | Orange Juice! Politics For The Rest Of Us. — January 29, 2009 @ 1:22 AM

    […] The Daily Pilot newspaper, which serves Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, went through three rounds of layoffs last year – they even laid off 20 year veteran Tony Dodero, who was their Director of “News and Online.”  Now their City Desk Editor, Paul Anderson, thinks he can tell us what makes for a good blogger, in a post in his own blog. […]

  5. Comment by Dan Chmielewski — January 29, 2009 @ 1:58 PM

    You’re spot on correct that the best blog posts require some actual journalism. But not every post can work that way. Some posts break news in the best journalistic traditions and other posst opine on a news story from somewhere else. The worst of the lot are the rumormill blogs with posts written by people who are only brave behind a keyboard; some so brave they don’t use their real names. These blogs and posts are not worth anyone’s time.

  6. Comment by panderson — January 29, 2009 @ 4:34 PM

    You make great points, Dave, but we agree more than anything. Nate Silver is a perfect example of what I was talking about — citizen journalism. Nate and his team actually did real journalism — very valuable journalism, IMHO. They went out to field offices to compare Obama’s organization with McCain’s. It was something sadly lacking from the MSM. I’m not trying to denigrate analysis-type blogging — as I said I love what the Atlantic guys do — but I take a dim view of people who just offer commentary off the top of their heads without any expert perspective. I can get that sitting next to the loudest crank on the bus and it would be just as edifying.

  7. Comment by panderson — January 29, 2009 @ 4:40 PM

    Art, it wasn’t my intention to attack anyone.

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