Gun Blogs and Gun Rags
In his defense, I don’t read a lot of gun mags.
I pass this bit of news along for what it’s worth, being unable to vouch for the accuracy of the source (or lack thereof). You are free to draw your own conclusions.
this bit of news being Obama’s lawyers were threatening the licenses of any TeeVee stations that ran NRA ads claiming the ads were lies. And by lies, they meant politically inconvenient for Obama.
This annoyed Bitter, who said:
I noted that if Petzal read any gun or political blogs in the course of the last week that he would have seen a much better job of covering these threats by the Obama campaign with original source material.
Sebastian and I both posted it around the time the NRA release went up. It was linked on Instapundit that night, along with many pro-gun blogs. The next day, it was everywhere, including SayUncle, the biggest gun blogger. Even if you believe Technorati (which is completely unreliable for blog tracking nowadays, tragically), about 200 blogs either linked to our posts, my version of the letter, or NRA’s press releases. That doesn’t include people who only linked to Instapundit or linked to specific files from NRA’s releases.
This story was everywhere. So how is it that a blogger missed it?
That is an issue with the gun magazines in general. They’re not really a place one would go for breaking news. As Robb Allen said once:
You know what I like about Freedom First?
I can get a great recap of what I read on the blogs last month.
And that’s true. The magazines can recap what has happened. The blogs, in real time, cover the issues with near instant updates. We’re about as current as can be. Some folks are pointing that out (see bottom of page four). Now, I noted at the top that I don’t read a lot of gun mags. And it’s true. I read two because one comes with an NRA membership and the other was a gift. From the political scene, these magazines are a decent recap of what has happened. But I already know that stuff. What I read the gun magazines for are the pics and reviews of various products. I like to read that stuff. And until manufacturers start sending bloggers product to to review (and some have started and I think more will follow suit), I’ll continue reading magazines just for that. Different venues. But if dead tree writers are going to act like bloggers, then they should probably read them if they want to stay up to date. Being a week late on a major gun story is kinda weak.
More thoughts on the Gun Blogging Community here.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Depending on the pre-press, editing hassles and lead time, a week late when you get it is cutting-edge for a monthly magazine. A weekly magazine is keeping pace at a week behind.
For a blog, a week behind is trying to catch the eye of the author’s regular magazine readers who said “oh, he has a ‘blog’ I’ll go look…does anyone remember the password for the computer?”
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:31 am
In your defense, Field & Stream isn’t really a gun mag.
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
But really, Petzal is one of the good guys, so don’t beat him up too much. See here and here. I think quite a few of us have grown in our appreciation of the we’re-all-in-this-together aspect of things since 1994.