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Instapundit.com and the rise of Online Opinion Journalism
Blogging has been dismissed as yet another Internet fad and heralded as a force that could transform journalism and the nature of the online community. That said, the popularity of weblogs such as Instapundit.com has made one thing clear: mainstream media's established pundits don't have a copyright on opinion-making.

by Juan Antonio Pastor

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, established pundit.
Photo courtesy of Alex Knapp

The proliferation of online journals known as weblogs, or blogs, has resulted in a flurry of opinion that is often at odds with the commentary churned out daily by the established punditocracy. The most popular blogs, such as Instapundit.com , have garnered so much attention that it sometimes seems that they've become part of the system they're rallying against. Nonetheless, the blog format is inherently different from print or broadcast media, which makes it stand apart from mainstream opinion journalism of the sort practiced by op-ed columnists like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, or TV personalities like MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews.

To their proponents, blogs harness the power of technology to offer a more democratic alternative to mainstream media. Glenn Reynolds, the creator of Instapundit.com and a law professor at the University of Tenessee, uses his blog as a soapbox for libertarian polemics about "the intersection between advanced technologies and individual liberty." Says Reynolds; "The vast majority of my writing touches on this in one way or another." Like many politically minded bloggers, Reynolds believes that the Net affords media-savvy amateurs the opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the pros. Reynolds launched his blog because he "wanted to show that any reasonably bright individual could do the same stuff famous pundits do." In a recent column on coverage of the D.C. sniper, Reynolds decried how little attention was paid, in the initial coverage of the shootings, to the possibility that the seemingly motiveless killings could be terrorist acts. Everyone is "trying to avoid talking about terrorism," wrote Reynolds. "You have to read news the way you'd read old Soviet newspapers, focusing on what's not mentioned."

Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit.com

Scott Norvell, a former executive editor of foxnews.com who now works for the Fox News Channel, believes that bloggers like Reynolds are having an undeniable influence on journalism at large. During his time at foxnews.com, recalls Norvell, the site began posting a different blog each day. "The mainstream media have adopted the blog format," he says. "What they've missed, though, is that it is the bloggers themselves that make the product interesting, not the format." According to Norvell, some online media outlets merely created blogs that echo their editorial voice, rhather than diversifying their opinion-shovelers. An avowed libertarian, he believes Instapundit.com is successful because "Glenn speaks to a growing group of people who tend to think for themselves and make up their own minds about specific issues rather than adhering to a party platform."

Some journalists, however, are not so impressed by the blog phenomenon. Bon Von Sternberg, of the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune, contends that blogs are "rarely" journalism. In most cases, he says, bloggers are "playing telephone, rather than engaging in actual fresh reporting." Moreover, he argues, the medium hardly represents a diversification of opinion. On the contrary, he says, the format "seems to attract more conservative/libertarian types; it replicates the growth of talk radio." Nor is it any less driven by the cult of the personality familiar from big media, he suggests; Reynolds, says Von Sternberg, "seems to have a chip on his shoulder and is more than a little impressed with the sound of his own voice."

Regardless of their biases, blogs affect media in small but significant ways. When he worked at foxnews.com, says Norvell, "more stories than I can recall" came directly from the blogging community, which he believes "is a valuable pipeline for story ideas." James Lileks, another journalist for the Star Tribune and the author of his own blog, Lileks.com, agrees. "The Internet has democratized opinion journalism," he says. "There are many good, insightful people [like Glenn Reynolds] out there." Appropriating a term coined by bloggers, Lileks dubs Reynolds and other free-thinking, do-it-yourself pundtis "anti-idiotarians" -an "idiotarian" being a person who is deaf to logical arguments and obsessed with conspiracies.


Logo of the libertarian log, Instapundit.com

Instapundit.com is remarkable not only for Reynold's incisive commentary but because its popularity has spread rapidly by word of mouth, winning Reynolds celebrity status in the blogging world. Reynolds says he is astonished at how many visitors his site is drawing these days. "For me, it's an enjoyable way to get [my] thoughts out," he says. "Bloggers offer rapid response to current events, which people have come to expect, and a variety of informed perspectives that aren't represented in traditional media." By handing the masses a bullhorn, Reynolds and other up-and-coming bloggers have created a space where opinions are not subjected to the ideological polarities of already- established pundits.

Juan Antonio Pastor is the Managing Editor of ReadMe 3 and a senior at New York University, where he is majoring in broadcast journalism.

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