Talk:The Daily Howler

POV

I disagree with the POV edits, Sommerby is unusual in the field for criticizing both sides, while he does not disguise his liberal leanings he is far less partisan than media matters which only ever reports right wing bias. He is also notable for attacking left wing bloggers, which incidentally is probably why his rankings have slipped a bit of late, people are less willing to link to him after he slams them. Incidentally, mention of Chris Mathews is misleading, on the left Mathews is considered a right wing pundit even though Mathews still claims he is a democrat. --Gorgonzilla 18:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Examples

Sommerby broke the story of how Declan McCullough reporting comments on his own reporting created the false 'Gore claimed to have invented the Internet' meme. Anyone want to get the details?--Gorgonzilla 20:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Notability

Here are some comments I included in the VfD as evidence of notability. Perhaps some of this is interesting to incorporate in the article.

The Daily Howler is notable because it is one of the most influential political blogs out there. Arguably, it is notable also because it was one of the earliest political blogs (1998).

Evidence of influence (this list could easily be expanded):

• The Columbia Journalism Review ran an article[1] about The Daily Howler and its author Bob Somerby from which I quote: "Bob Somerby needs no introduction, of course, unless your days are spent solely in the brick-and-mortar world..."
• Paul Krugman opened one of his op-eds[2] for the New York Times as follows:

A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.

• The Daily Howler was included by CNN[3] on a list of about twenty "political must-read" websites.
• It is currently listed by Alexa as the tenth ranked journalism site.[4]
• Many of the most prominent political blogs include The Daily Howler on their blog roll or equivalent, despite the fact that Somerby does not reciprocate (he has no such list): e.g. Daily Kos, Instapundit and Brad Delong's site[5] (I only checked these three).

Crust 16:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed this from the last sentence: ", although more articles are critical of right wing media bias than left."

I thought this was misleading, as in fact Somerby's main focus, and the objects of his most vitriolic attacks, are those members of the supposedly left-leaning "mainstream media" who tend to fixate on meaningless minutiae and neglect real reporting in favor of speculative commentary on people's motives. Pwallach 17:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Somerby's focus is not on politics directly, but on the terrible job that our media does. He rails long and hard against left leaning media figures, although mostly for reasons of ineptness or apparent collusion--with the media establishment--in supporting favored "scripts". Another example is Somerby's long-standing devotion to accurate reporting on education, where he finds fault with the generally poor reporting on the subject. User:RedCharlie RedCharlie (talk) 20:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Probably the best known...

That dubious sentence is the worst sentence I've ever seen on wikipedia. Please get some sources. Timneu22 (talk) 10:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

If that's the worst you've seen, all I can say is welcome to Wikipedia. ;)

The sentence in question (now deleted) was: "The Daily Howler is probably the best known "media monitoring" blog that has an extensive track record of criticizing bias on both sides of the political divide."

There are two implicit claims in there:

1. The Daily Howler has such a track record and

2. it is (probably) the best known media blog with such a track record.

As for #1, I think that's widely recognized, see e.g. Somerby's very extensive criticism of Joe Wilson which generated a lot of animosity against him from the progressive blogosphere. As for #2, well what other media monitoring blog with such a track record is better known? Daily Howler is certainly one of the best known media monitoring blogs and most such blogs rarely criticize their "own side". Whatever you think of e.g. Media Matters (respectively, NewsBusters) surely it is undeniable that they seldom aggressively criticize the left (respectively, the right). Crust (talk) 14:28, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Background

Shouldn't the fact that Somerby was Al Gore's college roommate be mentioned somewhere here? His friendship with Gore is pretty obviously relevant to the origins of his site. john k (talk) 16:39, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

It already does. It currently says " In college at Harvard, he was roommates with the actor Tommy Lee Jones and former Vice President Al Gore." Fred Birchmore (talk) 17:14, 15 April 2012 (UTC)