---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: peretz
To: Juan Cole <
jricole@gmail.com>
Actually saw that piece when you first wrote it.
Glad you liked the chapter, and thanks for taking a look. Incidentally, I just learned that you came to prominence largely by way of blogging, which is interesting because the dynamic I'm proposing as the solution to our nation's information distribution crisis is almost entirely dependent on the blogosphere's ability to take talent that might otherwise be unduly constrained by the structure of our media - a certain sort of person is likely to jump through the hoops to become a traditional newspaper columnist and a certain sort of person is not, and there's certainly no guarantee that the former personality is going to be better than the latter to any extent. And having gone through the work of people like Friedman, Krauthammer, Cohen, etc., and then compared them to the output that comes from you, Greenwald, and others that have gained relative prominence by way of the internet, I think I can show that the dynamics of the internet are obviously more conducive to bringing the better commentators to the top than are the dynamics of the mainstream media (and this may be obvious to those of us who are familiar with the blogosphere, but a surprising number of otherwise well-informed people simply have no idea of this). The other solution I'd propose would involve new internet-based structures by which a sort of elected body of bloggers would unify in order to promote the most important stories and ensure that they don't fall through the cracks; this wouldn't necessarily be dependent on ideology, either, as libertarians, greens, moderate republicans, progressives, anarchists, and whatever else might all agree, for instance, to raise awareness about such things as drug legalization. If you're familiar with sites like reddit, I think that such an apparatus could be modeled partly on that.
Anyway, keep up the good work and happy New Year. I've attached a piece that I've come across recently and which might interest you if you're into media theory.
Thanks again,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY