Light posting for a little bit: I've been working (with Tex MacRae, my research partner) on another piece of the "Jeff Gannon" story, which has taken much of my attention the last day or two. (Not a feature this time, something a little more news oriented.) I'll let you know if/when it sees the light of day.

I've also been dealing, quite reluctantly, with some fallout from the Gannon article I published on Alternet. You can read a few of the gory details in my comments there, if you have a mind—I'm not inclined at this point to post the argument here. Short (and admittedly biased) version: I stuck my head up out of the ePluribusMedia grass, and got it lopped off for my pains. [You'll have noticed, if you've seen recent ePM diaries at Daily Kos, that if Susan Gardner isn't bylined, nobody is—just the corporate identity. Apparently the citizen's journalism revolution has declared an end to the bourgeois fiction of individual identity—at least so long as the individual's not named Susan.] Having my user account peremptorily deleted on the Propagannon forum doesn't cause me much grief, since I wasn't a regular there, particularly after the shabby treatment I got during the story process: the fact that they also deleted Tex's account (and blogslut's, the third culprit connected with the Alternet piece)—Tex having been the forum's most passionate and commited researcher—speaks sad volumes about the organization's tendency to defensiveness and insularity under its founding leadership. (Even a last-gasp forum post that Tex wrote attempting to air out the disagreement, along with a growing and productive comment thread on it, got itself deleted by Susan's outraged minions.) I'm sorry to see it, since I had real hopes for the ePM experiment. I'll continue to hope, as far as possible, but paranoia doesn't look good on anybody.

posted by michael  2:58:30 PM  
tell me about it []