Bloggasm

In 1999, nearly finished with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, Michael Ubaldi gave up his dalliance with leftism when a friend made clear that private individuals are accountable to the law, and that the state is law — and climactically accountable to no one. A graphic designer and document editor by trade, his experience with electoral politics (he served for two years as president of his city’s Republican party) and government (he is chairman of the municipal civil service commission) and photography (digital cameras are a hell of a lot easier than oil on canvas) informs his work on uBlog: politics, history, life and liberty.

Simon Owens: Do you think that the political blogging world is more vitriolic than other forms of political media?

Michael Ubaldi: Potentially, yes, more than print and television. Bloggers aren’t governed by broadcast regulations, and expectations of conduct online are much more permissive than that of journalists. Among major bloggers who are intermediaries between popular and commercial media, profanity is tolerated but not expected; while weblogs daily serving red meat to a given constituency often trade in expletive ad hominem. Apart from chic publications, professional newsrooms and editorial staffs keep the nasty stuff off the record and off-camera. It’s only political cartoonists who seem to most consistently affront. Of course, the question becomes what the public prefers. The blogosphere is a chamber full of contrary voices, some of them impolite. The news press, anymore, is characterized by an institutional humorlessness.

Simon Owens: Do you think political blogs provides a checks and balance system on the Mainstream Media to make sure they get their facts straight?

Michael Ubaldi: Can anyone be entirely objective — or is intellectual honesty and full disclosure what we are truly after? They are, I say, but let’s assume that objectivity is possible. I have likened news journalists to “milkmen of information.” A reporter collects information from authoritative sources or directly observes an event, then organizes presentations for delivery to customers. If he ever declares himself more than a courier, he is as notional as a milkman who thinks that udders are quaint and that all he needs to do is point his finger at an empty glass bottle and transubstantiate. Now, consumer associations can chasten a company dealing in substandard products; there is nothing special about bloggers in that regard. Weblogs, however, possess a collective and connective power to match the kind of oligopoly that has been established in mainstream reporting.

Like the metaphor, reporters today seem to believe they actually “create” news, as if reality were a modular stage set with which to furnish their ideas about how things should be. Common techniques are burying ledes, skewing headlines and excluding easily accessible facts. Nearly two years ago, CBS News tried to build a credible story out of what any serious person would identify as forgeries, and its would-be competition stood mute before reluctantly, and desultorily, covering the professional implosion of Dan Rather et al. Even Fox News was, as a network, only cautiously following an investigation led by bloggers. Journalism is too fraternal; even corrupt, an indistinct line between reporting and commentary. Internet discourse is disparaged as a transoceanic game of Chinese Whispers, but blogging is by nature independent and adversative. It allows the rapid development of an idea or understanding through the excision of poor arguments and bad information. So bloggers are uniquely qualified to see that news agencies drop pretenses, report and make more than passing references to mistakes.

Simon Owens: Do you tend to discuss whatever topic is popular in the blogging world for the moment, or do you look for the overlooked stories? How do you go about finding the material you blog about?

Michael Ubaldi: There are some who take up the often thankless work of parochial topics — for instance, one fellow blogged for a few years exclusively on state issues — but most political bloggers seem to understand that if one wants a chance to be widely recognized, one is apropos. Commentary on current events can follow two forms: short, link-heavy reactions to excerpted news or opinion; and articles or essays on pertinent topics. Steven Den Beste respectively identified those who adopt these forms “linkers” and “thinkers.” I began like most, posting brief observations. After three years my style became more deliberative, and as far as readers might be concerned the depth of my publishing increased at the cost of frequency — and, eventually, quantity. Lately my preference (when I write, I have been busy) has been to maintain a distance from events and write an original, prognosticative or recapitulative article of anywhere between 500 and 1500 words. That runs counter to the attraction and strength of blogging — there is no minimum requirement for content — but since one can easily become redundant next to high-traffic “linkers,” I suspect that the most balanced weblog is one that supplements articles with regular, one-paragraph entries.

Topics run the range of my interests, from politics to comedic or poetic responses to photographs. Sometimes I will write about news of the day out of obligation; sometimes an incident, even a snatch of a conversation, will lead to a thought or memory that results in eight hundred words.

Simon Owens: Has the political blogosphere become too saturated, making it harder and harder for new political bloggers to become more popular?

Michael Ubaldi: The blogosphere has gone pyramidal. New bloggers and obscure bloggers form the participatory base that supports a tiny elite who, most notably through Pajamas Media, work with established, if forward-thinking, journalists. Inevitably so: no social arrangement can remain egalitarian forever. A lot of the elite benefit from seniority as much as their own skill and popularity, but then not every blogger who got in on the ground floor is well known or even still writing. Blogging retains its inimitable qualities. Merit still carries value, the URL of a blog on its first day is as accessible as say, National Review’s. Novitiates are regularly inducted as primes.

Yet it has been long enough to look back before the war and remember salad days. Steven Den Beste ran forums for his weblog. Charles Johnson referred to President Bush as “Shrub.” Oliver Willis traded friendly bon mots with Glenn Reynolds before Willis went bananas and Jeff Goldstein started making commensurate fun of him. Not a year after September 11th, Andrew Sullivan’s eponymous website was promoted one afternoon by Rush Limbaugh — which was my introduction to weblogs. Even with blogging’s rise in popularity in 2002 and 2003, I am sure to have benefited from the relatively small and flat blogosphere when I first began. Glenn Reynolds, as per his site policy at the time, added me to his blogroll when I asked nicely.

I also received a hand up from Steven Den Beste, who included me in one of his last lists of “rising stars.” Den Beste was a punctilous meritocrat about it, selecting bloggers partly on the basis of their not having asked him for a favor; so much that when I sent him a letter of thanks, he read an implication of debit and insisted in his prompt reply that I owed him nothing. On his weblog, he noted several times that he wished he had received, when he first began, the help he was offering as a high-profile blogger. In that, and Den Beste’s eventual departure from political blogging, I found a certain truth about success and contentedness — one an ambitious blogger should consider. Within a year or so of inception, a few blogs “break” while most, like mine, don’t. Well, what did you want? Some bloggers feel cheated out of popularity and a large audience, so they quit. Others realize that a small audience is reward enough for a creative outlet that will be silently read by the most unlikely people, so they continue, and enjoy the experience.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Michael Ubaldi: My weblog might supplement the reading of other weblogs, at least in terms of importance and the weight of experience behind the authors. Instapundit: Glenn Reynolds’ finger keeps a pulse on daily news. Belmont Club: Richard Fernandez may occasionally wax belletristic and excerpt lyrics from a Sixties song, but this only reminds you that the Apollonian sage has quite a lot of grit. USS Clueless: Steven Den Beste now blogs about animé and Japanese culture; his political and philosophical oeuvre is a complete library. The Corner: National Review’s staff nearly keeps up with Glenn Reynolds; and besides, one can read directly John Derbyshire and indirectly National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., neither of whom has succumbed to the American animus against formal writing. Iraq the Model: a lifetime under tyranny did nothing to still the democratic passions of the Fadhil brothers; as they are two of a kind of Arab much of the world seems would rather assume doesn’t exist, every day that they write is one more day of advocation for man’s consanguinity by self-determination.

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