NY Times Blows DeLay Blog Story

by gregflynn, Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 01:14:49 PM EST

The NY Times today published an article by Philip Shenon called The Hammer Strikes a Comeback Blow about Tom DeLay's new blog but completely omitted the fact that when the blog started up a 11 days ago it was quickly bombarded with unflattering unmoderated comments and just as quickly taken down to be restarted in a moderated format with the offending comments removed.  Tom DeLay blew it and the NY Times blew it by not reporting on his false start in this fluff piece about DeLay that displays very little knowledge about blogging.

Not to worry.  Enterprising blogger James J. Risser saved the original for posterity (or posteriority) at tomdelaydotcom.blogspot.com
 complete with all the comments.

This was discussed at length at ThinkProgress.org December 10th yet even an article at Slate.com December 14th missed the mis-step while the Guardian UK picked up on it on the same day.  Even as late as yesterday CBSNews was talking about the negative comments but the NY Times missed it completely (and even the CBS story counldn't get the rescue site URL correct).

Even the NY Times own blog The Caucus has no reference to DeLay's false start.  Is this ignorance, indifference to netroots or part of a rehabilitation of Republican bogeymen so as to better position the Times to attack Democrats when they take office?  I just don't understand how anyone could write so many words about DeLay's "blog", which he doesn't really write anyway, and not mention the blog's opening screw-up.

Crossposted on Daily Kos




Tags: NY Times, Tom DeLay, Texas (all tags)

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Update (none / 0)

I see that the CBS link to James Risser's site has changed already.  The author was very responsive to an email by Risser.  I hadn't looked to see if there was was an author link myself.  I was just checking to see what others had done with the story.

In a transcript of an interview with DeLay by The Hill December 11, he says, about blogging:

So we are sorely lacking in our ability to compete in the blogosphere. I want to show leadership by doing it myself.
::::
Red State was very good. I'm a novice at this thing; I'm just getting into it. We have spent the last couple months thinking about it and how we'd do it. Red State was very good. I was just itching to say something before my blog came up, so they were very good at giving us a little test at what its like. These two over here [motioning] are blog nuts but I'm not.
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The original concept was to do nothing but a blog. And we changed it to include building a grassroots organization to advance the conservative cause and to support Israel.
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Unfortunately, there is prohibition for a former member to aid, advise, or something else a foreign government. So the Israel part has gone on hold and the other part is actively going forward.
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I think we will play in the blogoshere. If I agree with something that someone wrote on another blog I am going to put it on my blog


by gregflynn on Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 05:02:21 PM EST


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