Entries and Timing

Blogs may be the one medium we found in our sample that could be described as genuinely operating 24 hours a day. Among the seven blogs, posting for the day began as early as 12:13 a.m. EDT (Eschaton) and ended at 12:01 a.m. the next day (Power Line). All blogs offered at least an 11-hour time span in the posts for the day.

Number and Timing of Posts, May 11, 2005 (EDT)

	# of Posts	1st Post Time	Last Post Time
Instapundit	25	7:15 a.m.	10:46 p.m.
Daily Kos	12	9:47 a.m.	11:06 p.m.
Talking Points	9	1:18 a.m.	8:08 p.m.
Crooks & Liars	16	3:07 a.m.	11:20 p.m.
Power Line	12	6:54 a.m.	12:01 p.m.
LGF	12	11:20 a.m.	10:07 p.m.
Eschaton	18	12:13 a.m.	10:52 p.m.
Note: all times converted to EDT

Topics Discussed

By the numbers, the topics bloggers covered were not all that different from the mainstream press.

What differed primarily were the subtopics and the information offered about them. The bloggers talked about some of the same stories as the mainstream press that day, but often in ways that were quite different.

Five of the seven blogs wrote about Iraq that day, often mentioning the slew of car bombs the night before. Crooks and Liars and Eschaton both mentioned the outbreak in relation to a New York Times op-ed that day by John Tierney, who called on journalists not to be so fixated on such attacks. Both blogs disagreed with Tierney. Crooks and Liars also linked to a Yahoo story on the bombings as well as to comments from Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan who blogs on the Middle East, history and religion. Eschaton followed the initial post with one two hours later that linked to a Louisville Courier-Journal opinion piece by the American journalist Molly Bingham, suggesting that her essay “could have been” a reply to Tierney. He then also linked to a blog by Richard Cranium that “has more on Ms. Bingham” — namely Cranium’s reaction to the op-ed.

The Daily Kos offered the most multi-tiered post. It began with a link to an Associated Press story that he pulled from NYTimes.com. Kos picked up on an interesting element missed in the mainstream press coverage we examined — the practice of having new police force recruits line up together outside before they are searched. “Umm, why do they still do this? . . . Why don’t they search people before they stand in line? That much explosive can’t be easy to hide from the most cursory search,” Kos wondered. He also linked to and reran a portion of comments by the blogger DHinMI on a GAO report about “the mess in Iraq.” DHinMI (whom Kos did not identify, but who is a contributing blogger to thelasthurrah.com), linked directly to the GAO report. That was followed by another rerun except with a full link, introduced only as “this.” It was a Washington Post piece on the bombings. And then, “Update: Armando has more [LINK] on the ‘reputation’ of the insurgents.” Again it was up to the reader to know who Armando was, or to figure it out.

Power Line didn’t blog about the car bombs but had two entries that related to Iraq. The first excerpted text from an Arabic paper that said the jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been wounded in fighting. That, the blogger wrote, supported his earlier view that Zarqawi was still alive and well. The second entry linked to a Washington Times story asserting that the war in Iraq is the “last stand for al Qaeda.” The blogger agreed.

The focus of Little Green Footballs, the West Coast conservative blogger, was entirely international on May 11. It did not directly address the bombings either, but concentrated on one of the other major stories in the print media this day, about the riots in Afghanistan that stemmed from reports of desecration of the Koran by U.S. soldiers. The site linked to Roger L. Simon’s blog, which said the Newsweek article that first reported the incident was based on an anonymous source. Then at 1 p.m., Green Footballs touched on Operation Matador, the American military’s weeklong hunt for insurgents along Iraq ’s Syrian border, by linking to another blog’s post on the matter.

What about coverage of the story that ate up so much of the cable TV day, a small plane’s violation of D.C. air space? It was largely absent from the blogs. Just two of the seven we monitored addressed it at all. One of those two wasn’t so much focused on the event as what it considered the hyperventilated tone of the media coverage. At 12:28 p.m., just minutes after the evacuation ended, Eschaton offered this assessment of the coverage:

 "Our quality media . . . just on the Tee Vee! *pant, pant, pant* -- ‘The White House and Capitol Building are under attack by enemy aircraft!’ . . . .’Sorry, just a Cessna that lost its way, all clear given.’ STOP HURTING AMERICA!

Update: [Never Mind]" — which linked to a Yahoo story that day.

At 2:46 p.m. EDT Instapundit linked to Andy Cochran’s Counter-Terrorism Blog and his brief, blackberry account from the scene, commending the Capitol police, as well as to a timeline at ABCnews.com that was put out by the White House. Then at 7:51 p.m. there was a link to the blogger David Corn’s report, again with a lighthearted tone.

The topic that most frequently popped up across the blogs was the ongoing Senate fight over the potential for the use of the filibuster in the judicial-nomination process — a subject that was a minor issue in the media over all this day, and largely restricted elsewhere to the major national papers we studied. Not only was the debate in process in the Senate that day, but a group of students from Princeton were in Washington “filibustering” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to preserve the practice. Kos , Talking Points, and Eschaton, the three liberal blogs, supported the right to filibuster, and all linked to the Princeton student blog. In addition, Kos, at 11:46 a.m., noted that no vote was held the previous day, “and we all know darn well that Kitten Killer Frist would’ve done the vote if he had the votes.” Kos also ran comments from DavidNYC, who met with the Princeton students that day. Joshua Marshall, at 11:26 a.m., criticized the Tribune reporter Jill Zuckerman for her use of the term “Nuclear Option” in describing the Republican plan: “Tell Zuckerman no more nuclear-backsliding!” And Eschaton, at 2:42 p.m. reran and linked to comments on the matter from a blogger named Digby.

Posts About the Senate Filibuster Rule Debate

	Filibuster Debate	Princeton Student Protest
Daily Kos	11:46 a.m.	6:53 p.m.
Talking Points	11:26 a.m.	6:50 p.m.
Crooks & Liars	9:47 p.m.	----
Power Line	6:54 a.m.	----
Eschaton	2:42 p.m.	9:46 a.m.
Note: All Times EDT

The other liberal blog, Crooks and Liars, reran portions of a blogger called the Carpet Bagger Report, which quoted the Christian Coalition founder James Dobson’s explanation of why the debate over the filibuster had become so heated.

Power Line was the only conservative blog of the group to weigh in on the matter this day. It led with the topic at 6:54 a.m., but from yet another novel facet — the legal angle. It ran the views of a lawyer named Michael Schwartz (whose comments were dated May 10) on the constitutional legitimacy of the filibuster and asked him a question; his response was added later. Then at 9:14 p.m. the blog came back to the issue, picking up what was apparently a continuing discussion on the blog about Federal Judge Priscilla Owen with comments from an appellate lawyer.