Never mind the certainty of death and taxes: Whenever ‘Net Buzz includes any discussion of a political issue or zings a politician – Democrat or Republican, directly or in passing – complaints from readers will follow as surely as the swallows return to Old Faithful.
Happens every time, most recently after a Sept. 27 column about an Internet-based “vote swapping” scheme that seeks to boost swing-state support for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. The idea behind this Web site – www.votepair.org – is to convince swing-state supporters of Green Party candidate David Cobb and the Egomaniac Party’s Ralph Nader to cast potentially meaningful votes for Kerry in return for their protest ballots being registered in other states that Kerry is sure to win.
The complaints typically come in two flavors. The first is the garden-variety “You don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.” For example, the most frequent complaint about the VotePair column – by far – came from readers who consider wrongheaded an aside I made about the Electoral College having outlived its usefulness.
The second variety – the topic being addressed here today – goes roughly like this: “You don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about, and, of much greater importance, what you’re talking about doesn’t belong in a technology-oriented publication such as Network World.” (No one ever writes to say they agree on the substance but don’t want me to write about politics.)
Here’s just one example of the second type of complaint:
“It bothers me greatly to continue to hear and read the vicious and vile comments directed toward the president of the United States. Your commentary in the March 6 issue has absolutely no place in this type of media.”
That March 6 issue would be March 6, 2000. The president was Bill Clinton. And the vicious and vile comments – I poked fun at Clinton for oohing and ahhing over a screen saver – would be considered a love note in today’s poisonous political arena.
So why would I continue to do something that so predictably annoys some readers? And why would Network World continue to allow me to do it?
It is my view – shared by my bosses, and we believe the vast majority of readers – that the confluence of politics and the network industry, the Internet, and technology in general is by no means a taboo subject in a publication devoted to those disciplines. On the contrary, we believe it would be wrong to artificially restrict the range of allowable topics – especially in an opinion column.
That’s the high-minded explanation. Equally at work here is something more basic: Network World readers care about a lot of different stuff, including the impact that politics has on the technology industry, and the impact that technology has on politics.
Another example: Two weeks ago we ran a news story on the front page about the overwhelming opposition to President Bush’s re-election bid expressed at the Vortex 2004 conference during a forum designed to address the candidates’ stands on a range of technology issues.
That news story, which I wrote, also drew complaints, some from readers who took exception to various comments made by those quoted, and others from readers who believe the political subject matter was simply inappropriate for a technology magazine.
Good, bad or indifferent, it was the most heavily viewed story on Network World Fusion that week.
(By the way, those who consider “vote swapping” an abomination should take heart from the fact that VotePair does not appear to be shifting the electoral landscape, perhaps because people find it distasteful, or perhaps because the supply of would-be protest voters is smaller this time around.)
Fire away. The address is buzz@nww.com.
