March 28, 2003

Raven on how to read the news

Christian Crumlish

The Raven has, by dint of daily effort, accomplish what many bloggers dream of doing but few manage: He publishes a highly literate, well crafted, thoughtful essay every day (sometimes more than one per day), usually on the newsmedia environment we live in. His audience grows steadily. He has earned each daily reader.

I'm not sure how he does it so consistently and so well, but I suspect his seekrit ingredient is talent.

Today (in Being Critical), the Raven advises us on correcting the astigmatic Hubble-telescope view of current events we may be getting if we rely on any homogeneous hegemonous mediasphere for our perspective. Along the way, he dispenses with lesser lights with quick surgical strikes. Nanoconservative bête noire Robert Fisk is summarily dismissed:

As if there were any doubts, his conclusion tells us he's going for the artistic angle: "We may put on the hairshirt of morality in explaining why these people should die." He was obviously gunning for a shockinaw effect with this, but he only succeeds in further deadening our already-numbed minds and does so while dancing on the corpses of the dead.

The Raven is a new kind of columnist for the post-everything readers he describes as "constantly checking and re-verifying your own assumptions, always asking 'who benefits if I believe this?'"

Posted by xian at March 28, 2003 10:22 AM
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