Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, September 13, 2009

Too Close To COIN For Comfort?

By Steve Hynd


Thanks to commenter Geoff for pointing me to a must-read article on the Columbia Journalism Review website. The piece focusses on Tom Ricks' advocacy-as-journalism and conflicts of interest in particular, but also looks wider. Key quote:



"When journalists place too much emphasis on how to fight an insurgency, their work can obscure the larger question of whether to fight one."


In comments, journalist Carl Prine writes that he wants to see:



hard questions about why reporters are wooed to join these think tanks. How much are they paid? How often do the publications that serve as their day jobs monitor the policy work they provide? How often do these same publications dislose to readers that the person doing the reporting might be quoting sources with whom he (or she) shares a professional relationship?


As the traditional media continue to fracture and new outlets emerge, such as the Abu Muqawama blog run through CNAS, should we not be looking harder at the role now played by journos imported to these blogs?


Are they not trading on their cachet and legitimacy earned at the traditional news organizations to become defacto sales persons for policy shops?


Of course, such stenography by reporters who feel they have to keep cozy with their sources isn't confined to those who also do think-tank work or have blogs - but there's certainly a greater tension between staying "agnostic" on an issue and advocating their own viewpoints for the latter group.



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1 comment:

  1. u want propagandaSeptember 13, 2009 at 3:00 PM

    ricks nor any current 'military' stenographer is fit to carry Halberstam's or Sheehan's jockstraps.

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