Pow! Bang! Slam!

I’ve been away from this blog for a few weeks, in a sort of one-man retreat pondering one question: what is it I can do with this blog? What can I add to the “conversation”? One thing for sure, I’m not going to beat up on the Bucks County Courier Times any more. I’ve had e-mail conversations with the paper about one day’s sloppy product overall, about a puzzling lack of explanations in a simple but important story, about the post-hoc fallacy, and a reporter’s backpedaling by saying it’s not her fault if people misinterpret what she writes.

I’ve also written a letter to the editor about a ridiculous guest column about “death panels” without a single reference to the actual text of the health care bill. When they published the letter I demanded an explanation of why they toned it down, which explanation, once given, poured gasoline on my fire.

Probably the least productive thing I did was becoming a more or less regular commenter on one of the columnists' blogs. I was wasting my time even reading the thing, much less reading the existing comments to see what I could add, then writing my couple of sentences, then checking back to see what else was new, perhaps even a rebuttal to my comment.

In the early stage of this prolonged meditation about this blog, I was in our local dollar store and stumbled upon and bought -- for a dollar -- a copy of Taking On The System, by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the founder of the Daily Kos blog. He cites a rule “Don’t punch down.” With bold irony, he uses himself as an example. When the right-wing media started attacking him, readership of his blog went through the roof.

“Punching down” can also means beating up on people smaller than you. In other words, bullying. I don’t mean smaller in the sense of significance or worthiness. But it seems they didn’t have my journalism teacher or mentors, my variety and length of experience, or my passion for accurate, responsible and readable writing. I meant well of course, even hoping at one point to have some avuncular, friendly, positive relationship with the home team. But it felt like a fight, and an unfair one.

So that’s one thing I won’t do any more. I’m not 100 percent sure what I will do, but I’ve shaken that off, and I think I can proceed in uncertainty.


Punching up, perhaps. Sounds like even more fun.