“We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately.” So said someone once, apparently; it was either Ben Franklin or Ben Stein. Anyhow the folks at Pajamas Media are now hanging together at their sleek new “portal” OSM (Open Source Media, LLC), complete with an Editorial Advisory Board and a Staff. This group of bloggers obviously includes a lot of people that I read regularly. Too many to mention, in fact. Nevertheless the whole enterprise has given RWB the willies from the beginning, probably for reasons that are congenital. I have yet to appreciate the rush to gather a bunch of independent-minded iconoclastic free spirits under one umbrella. What does it get you, exactly? A bunch of independent-minded iconoclastic free spirits shuffling slowly down the street, with their outer extremities getting soaked. Does that mean anything? I’m sure it doesn’t, but it still gives me the willies.

Dig the manifesto that appears as an ad all over the OSM site, from Editorial Board Member Tammy Bruce:

The core of the American people has manifested itself most purely in blogs because elites for so long controlled all avenues of communication. Those days are over now. Americans face a media collective elite that views the rest of us as the great unwashed masses.

What did I tell you? Willies.

Now, the financial upside of this kind of organization is obvious, and my complete lack of financial smarts would be betrayed by a peek at my bank balance. Still, I just don’t understand how you can trumpet your newness and your independence of the old ways when you appear to be moving closer towards the existing model.

And I have to say that I find it almost bizarre that the keynote speaker at today’s OSM launch convention was Judith Miller. A few weeks ago she was with the New York Times - a branch of the media collective elite (the bad one). But I guess her 80 days in jail was a kind of purgatory and now she’s clean.

Now, I’m almost certain that I’m completely wrong with my negative attitude towards this world-conquering-conglomeration-of-blogs concept. It’s just that I have yet to figure out exactly why I’m wrong.

…

Addendum: I see that Ann Althouse is another skeptic. She poked some fun at Open Source Media, LLC (they’re not a media collective elite, remember) and promptly earned a slap-down from “Founder and Chief Technology Officer” Charles Johnson, of LGF.

This is not pretty!

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