Blogging's Repercussions

Quiet day watching the little ones today, whilst my better half was out working. Did a little surfing during their nap time and was hit with a couple different tidbits related to blogging's implications & repercussions.

On the sticking-it-to-the-man front (yes, the pun that will later become apparent was intentional): If you haven't heard about the Jeff Gannon controversy, here's a synopsis: He's a white house reporter who is the latest victim of a blogger's "outing". He was exposed not only for having questionable credentials (he's a "reporter" for a far-right leaning web site, and that's about it), but also for the fact that he was (a) using an alias, (b) owns and runs a number of gay porn sites, and (c) moonlight as a gay prostitute. Well, how about that! Anyhow, great summaries & commentary can be seen:

On this Daily Show clip.

And on this Bill Maher clip.

(those clips courtesy of OneGoodMove.org)

Anyhow, aside from being a hilarious story, it's just awesome to see the pablum-spooning mediocrity that passes for press here in the US getting shaken up by the web.

On a more somber note, an article in the SF Chronicle about Justin Hall's blog-bow-out as of late. I met Justin through friends at GDC, and then had dinner & drinks with him at Tokyo Game show this past year. Justin's one of those incredibly smart, creative, and energetic people whose brains run faster than their mouths can, and so they seem like they are in a continual game of catch up. I really like people like that. Anyhow, Justin suffered a bit of a breakdown/burnout following a decade of living his life in full exposure. I hope that as this article predicts, he'll come back. His blog was interesting and provocative. It was also one of the reasons I started doing this :-)