Scripting News: Why TPM deserves an award

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Why TPM deserves an award

Scott Rosenberg has taken a hiatus from writing political essays, but he just published another great one, about why we should pay close attention to the coverup of the firing of the nine US attorneys. Whether the President was a Republic or Democrat, makes no difference, if the US attorneys were fired to subvert with the election process, it's a scandal of huge proportion, that undermines the fairness of the US justice system.

What many don't know, and it is not widely reported, that if this is a replay of Watergate, then the role of Woodward and Bernstein is being played by a community of bloggers, Talking Point Memo, founded by Joshua Marshall, who was at the first BloggerCon, and who will be at the Personal Democracy Forum in mid-May in NY (I will be there too). When I see him, I hope to shake his hand, thank him and congratulate him.

Meanwhile I read in the Guardian, yet another conflicted and self-serving piece from a MSM publication, saying that blogs didn't turn out to be such a big deal after all.

If someone were to ask me what the future of blogging holds (and I am asked that frequently) I would say that in the future, mainstream press people will give up their fight with blogging and accept us as sources of information and perspective that enriches what they do, instead of being in conflict with it.

To me blogging is not just protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, it is also an instance of the Second, the right of the people to keep and bear arms. When the justice system is corrupted by the executive, we have the right and responsibility to reform it, with words, and with actions, as Marshall and his crew are doing so admirably, so Americanly (if that's a word).

We were meant to have an active and armed citizenry in the US. As long as people like the TPM community feel empowered, we have a chance of keeping our intellectual life rich and informed. Keep up the great work, it's important, and appreciated!

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:40 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Mar May