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When the blogs become the news

Noah Shachtman in Wired.com writes about how bloggers are often breaking stories and bringing them to national attention, when otherwise they would be ignored by the mainstream press. He specifically discusses Concordia as an example:

Congruent events occurred at Montreal’s Concordia University. In September, Palestinian supporters clashed with riot police before a planned speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Then, in December, the Concordia Hillel had its funding cut by the Concordia Student Union — allegedly for displaying a pamphlet for the Mahal 2000 program, which helps diaspora Jews volunteer for the Israeli army.

Bloggers were the only ones to pay attention to these events in the United States. Despite hundreds of articles on anti-Semitic incidents in France, the confrontations at Concordia received scant press coverage.

Bloggers like [Glenn] Reynolds and California Web designer Charles Johnson focused the attention of readers on the issue.

Now, Noah Joseph, a Concordia Hillel student leader, feels he’s got an international network of support.

“Were getting an absolute influx of e-mail — 400 to my personal account, thousands more to a general mailbox,” Joseph said. “It’s uplifting to know you’re not alone in all of this.”

I guess I could feel slighted that nobody mentioned me as the person who sent the story to Instapundit and LGF in the first place . . . but that would just be narcissistic. The point is, the Concordia story got more coverage thanks to them, and that’s all that matters.

Speaking of Noah Shachtman, he’s got a new blog, Defense Tech about technology and defense and the relationship between the two.

{ 4 comments… add one }
  • Mike Silverman 01.06.03, 7:20 PM

    Don’t worry, *I* know where Charles and Glenn got their Concordia news from 🙂

  • segacs 01.06.03, 7:51 PM

    Yeah . . . from you, right? 😉

  • Bill 01.07.03, 1:23 AM

    How did you get into blogging?

  • segacs 01.07.03, 2:05 AM

    Who, me? Just was a big fan of some other blogs on the net (you can see most of em linked on the lefthand side of this page) and I decided to start my own. Just like that.

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