The blog is a changing

Changes are coming. First off, please check out www.fischhead.com. Pretty cool huh? Secondly please check out the new blog name across the top of the page. See how it ties in to the domain name? That's what we call a theme in the writing game. But the really big change is still a few days away.

My goal is to build this blog into a reckoning force. I want to get my bearings and methods in place and then start doing something really interesting.

I believe that blogs are a continuation and extension of the very same Press that our Founding Fathers spoke of. The Press to which the First Amendment guarantees freedom did not resemble today's version of mainstream journalism. It was more akin to what you read on the Editorial Page or on a blog. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries newspapers were often nothing more than personal attacks against political rivals.

Unlike many of my blogging brethren I do not mean to imply that mainstream media (MSM in blogspeak) is dead and isn't covered by the First Amendment, it clearly is alive and is protected. I am saying that the FF could not have imagined any form of media that was capable of simultaneously reaching 250 million people. The FF couldn't have forseen media conglomerates owning dozens of venues across several mediums in multiple markets. Back then you were lucky if you could crank 250 pages a day.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:
The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Jefferson clearly understood that the citizen press may not be perfect in their reporting of events. However, their presence would keep government officials in line. The intent of the First was to ensure the safety of reporters from persecution and to provide a mandate for the citizenry to keep an eye trained on the government.

If you do some historical digging it is very easy to find the parallels between the broadsheet then and now. Here is an example using a tactic that we often see today in blogging...the story leak. Here is one describing a novel scheme to raise money, a lottery. Here is a scan of a 1828 paper that, in the first paragraph, details a Jacksonian tactic for gerrymandering that is very reminiscent of a recent Tom Delay tactic. The writer calls his opposition liars in the first sentence. I love that.

So it is with this adoration of free press and of the concept of the fourth estate providing governance of the governors that I will shortly unveil my grand plan for this blog. In the meantime I have a fun, politics-oriented, short-term plan that I think you will, not only, enjoy but should help boost traffic to the site.

In the meantime, I thank you for reading my blog.