Ben Smith politickers The Daily News with The Daily Politics

Does Ben Smith want to sqwash any possibility for true citizen journalism to bloom in New York City? Or is he becoming New York City's blogging avenger?

When I heard he was moving to The Daily News, I asked, dude! how do you get these blogjobs for mass media? He answers, like, well, I had to convince them they wanted not just a political reporter but a blogger as well.

What Ben has been able to pull off here in NYC is really interesting. National political blogging heavily depends on national newswires. Rarely does a national political blog break a story, unless, of course, you're Powerline and have Karl Rove's office giving you the evidence necessary for watergating Dan Rather.

Local political blogging is different. There are stories you know people are not writing about; and yet, political citizen reporting of any kind in New York City is almost impossible. The fact is that people like us here at The Daily Gotham do not have the resources that newspaper research annd editorial departments have. New York City is a huge city and you really need a whole squadron of people to get the job done.

Yet, when we do report, what we bring to the table is the notion that we are not feigning editorial innocense. It's something that is rampant in regular journalism but not until the Plamegate scandal was it really, truly addressed.

Anyhow, I think what Ben is doing is really interesting and important as well. I am still out as to how this is going to impact NYC political bloggers. On the one hand, most people who come to this site do so because they are looking for an editorial perspective the cannot find in the local media. On the other hand, they could I ask myself, can these newspaper blogs become our 'competition'? I stand in the possibility of making this blog New York City's largest liberal blog, but growing it though, has been ann uphill battle. Networking with other NYC bloggers is really just starting. Maybe Ben's blog can become a bridge for the local blogging community.

After the flip, is the comment I left Ben on the topic of networking ... and his picture Smiling

[via The Daily Politics]:

Hey Ben,

Good morning, congrats once again. OK, that's out of the way. Let's get to blogging b'ness.

I am blogger, may as well do a mini-rant. Heh.

No, seriously, do you think the editors would consider enabling trackbacks? There are plugins out there that allow for moderation and editorial control. This could be done in such a way that your blogroll becomes whitelist of sites that can trackback to your posts.

The New York Times has a "no linking to bloggers" policy. You can imagine where I stand on this. If The Daily News wants to set themselves apart from the grey dinosaur, they should really consider actually opening the newspaper to more interconnectedness with bloggers.

Yes, spammers have abused the trackback system. But if you're using MT, WP, there are plugins available to set them to moderation mode. That way you still have editorial control over the links.

With that in mind, I am asking all my bloggers not to link to the New York Times due to their "we don't link to bloggers" policy. They won't link to my blogs yet mine them for articles? There's no reason why then I should squander my SEO ranking on them. Which, btw, has unfortunately have me in a quandary with pornographers using my name to up their SEO ranking and has people asking me if I'd sell

Links here :

In short, tell your editors, you may have more traffic but bloggers end up having better SEO overall. If they need a presentation on this, I am more than happy to come in and talk to them about tech Smiling

I have a cuter picture of you, btw. Wanna swap it ... meow!

Liza Sabater, Publisher


The Daily Gotham
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Liza Sabater is the founder and publisher of The Daily Gotham. You can reach her at

Liza Sabater's picture

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atomicBirdsong's picture

Ben Smith a Bridge? You gotta be kidding.


Liza, uh - what are you talking about?

There is a ton of good local citizen journalism. Just off hand here are some: (disclaimer: this is mine) (get their email news letter)

They all do their own original reporting, and plenty has lots and lots of depth. Ben Smith is an insider gossip columnist tool. And his newest venture at community blogging, which I will not name, is a joke - just more insider baseball crap. Smith does almost no revelatory work.

If you want to help grow the NYC grassroots media community, link to more of the above websites in your front page stories. There is plenty going on out here.

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atomicBirdsong's picture

links weird

uh, I dont know what happened with the formatting up there. I pasted the urls all the same, either they should all have linked or none. The fact that three are linked and the rest are not was NOT intentional. and I am very sad that mine is one that got the linking.

I wanted to promote all those sites.

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Liza Sabater's picture

You jumped my shark

I am in the middle of some upgradings and one of the things I am adding to the site is a weblink module. This will allow for you to help add this links to our blogroll. With a script that I am adding, all the links will go to the front page.

I know all these sites, btw. I don't understand why, when we have a community site here, nobody has really come on over (outside of you) and said, hey, can we cross-post? Again, there is so much one or two people can do.

BTW, did I blog your maps? Again, I wish i could spend all day blogging about other people's blogs. I need a brainstorm here on how to make it so there is a real community site here.

BTW, if I were you, I'd take your comment and turn into into a blogpost. You know it'll go to the front page, don't you?

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atomicBirdsong's picture


Re: weblinks - yeah, you used to have that here 6 months ago. I remember linking to my site, and I was startled that it immediately went up on the home page. It is an interesting idea.

Re: maps - nah, never mentioned around here, but it's hard to imagine anyone didn't hear about them. I had referals from all over the place, lots of yahoo groups and email accounts.

Re: cross-posting and people using your site
Honestly I think there are two things at work in NYC that make political community blogs really hard to create.

1. NYers are hear to make money not obsess about politics.

I've had this disucssion with numerous people this seems to be the consensus, and seems to be why NYers are in general politically appathetic. Yeah, they cry alot about Haliburton, or whatever, but those are easy targets, and since its national and everyone agrees on that stuff then it is easy to kind of rant about. But mostly ranting is all that happens on national issues too. This ain't Stanford.

2. People don't cross post and people dn't seem to jin community sites because NYers are all strong personality types who want to do their own thing.

This is my thesis. Look, I personally don't have time to cross post my stories in different places, and I am not that interested in doing so. If I were a fledgeling blog maybe I would. But ultimately I want people going to my site. Cross posting just means people can go to another site to read my prattle.

And it is easier to personally express yourself with your own site, from the menus to header graphics, to whatever. A website is a very personal expression, and given that it is pretty easy to get established and linked to, cross posting or participating in a community site is that appealing in general.

My $.02

Final thought, you have to figure that the potential audience for a political site is very small even in a city of 6 Million. Of that small subset, you then have to figure that those who actually want to write about political stuff is small, so this really trims down the potential audience. If we look at DailyKos, it seems huge. But it is opperating at a national or even interenational scale. Kos also benefits from having a lightning rod in George Bush. If George Bush were out, I bet we would see traffic at Kos drop significantly. I bet if Gooliani were still in office political websites would be experiencing much higher levels of participation in NYC. But in anycase, to crunch the numbers, of the ~298 Million people in the US, Dkos attracts 600,000 a day? and has a membership of 84,000 I think. Thats a .2% readership and a .02% active audience respectively.

So if NYC were a micro model of the US, which its not, you would set as your goals as: 12,000 visitors a day, and 1200 members. But that's just not realistic, because NYC is not a political city. I bet Gothamist and Curbed don't get that much traffic. Although I would like to know what their numbers are. Smiling

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atomicBirdsong's picture



cross posting or participating in a community site is NOT that appealing in general.

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Solomon Grundy's picture

C'mon, that's a bit harsh. Be

C'mon, that's a bit harsh. Ben Smith's beat is politics, not policy. The insider baseball stuff is how politicos actually talk about politics.

But thanks for linking to those other blogs. I just cross-posted your comment...

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atomicBirdsong's picture


I'll consider I am being harsh, there is the occasional thing that Ben Smith posts that is interesting. But to say it's about politics and not policy is to decontextualize the politics. Why are people making the decisions they are making, what are they trying to do? These are the things that make the manuvering interesting. But I dont feel he gives that context. I think his work is for a audience that likes talking about what all the pols are doing. But I don't think it creates accessibilty to the process for average people. So if your goal is creating a politically active community, I don't think Ben Smith is the person you are going to look to, to stir participation.


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Michael Bouldin's picture

Process matters, I think

What I personally find most interesting about ben's various blogs is that they deal with the actual machinations and players behind the scenes (as it were); in general, politics is pretty much an abstract thing, which people think they have no influence over; but once you get down into the nitty-gritty, it's interesting just how much a single individual can do. Knowing who the players are and what they do helps with that, methinks.

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Liza Sabater's picture


He shows how petty politics really is.

If people realized that by just showing up they'd actually change part of the dynamics of NYC politics, things in this city would run completely different.

I get what Atomic is saying, that people who come here do so just to make money. But that's why I've stressed to a lot of people that their focus ought not to be either anybody but the 30-50 single or 1.5 incomes with children. Not the double incomes, but the families with one full-timer and another stay-at-home or with a part-time job. There are a lot of people in the city, college educated but politically estranged who fall into that category. These are the people we need to be focusing on because they are the ones sticking it out in New York City. They are not transients or have the social mobility of single or DWIKs.

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atomicBirdsong's picture


Yeah, I totally agree. My problem with Ben, is that the way he reports, he does not contextualize things. So, unless you know who the players are, and what they are connected to, what he writes doesn't tell enough of a story. If the moving and shaking was put in a better context related to issues, then I think that might be something people could understand.

It seems to me most people can handle an idea at about this depth: "Yankee Stadium, looks cool, oh, stealing parks, thats bad". But when it comes to, "it's going forward because of the political machine" they are like - "eh?". And that is several levels above someone got a committee appointment from Quinn or something that later translates into a Yes vote on the deal, which is way above people unles you walk them through it.

And I don't think the blog format, short quick posts, helps the situation. But I don't think contextualizing things is Ben's goal either - I think being a political gossip column is really his goal. And he can run his sites however he likes, but I don't think it's going to be doing anything for creating community activism. Maybe I will be proved wrong.

I think things like what DDDB is doing with block teams distributing news letters to their community is far more interesting in terms of buiding grassroots media in NYC. Or say visual resistance's focus on street art is a great way to reach youth. Indymedia Philly also did an interesting project recently, working with local unions on a campaign to educate people about Walmart, shooting video, getting out into the community and working hand in hand with the people. It helped built their audience and draw new people into participating in their grassroots media service.

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Solomon Grundy's picture

Uh, OK, but like you said, Be

Uh, OK, but like you said, Ben's goal isn't to create community activism.

I think his goal is loftier than how you're describing it, though. It's not political gossip, or it's not just political gossip. It's an insider take on how NYC politics actually operate. And yes, that involves a lot of political maneuvering and big personalities, and less policy talk than it should. You know, Hollywood for ugly people.

As someone who used to work in City Hall, I was so relieved when I discovered Politicker, because there was finally some place online where people seriously involved with NYC politics could talk the way we talk amongst each other. For better or for worse.

There's a time and place for explaining the stadium land-grab to the general pop, and there's a time and place for discussing it the way NYC wonks discuss it. Both are valuable.

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