Metro Pulse/Cover/The Technology Issue

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King of the Blogosphere

Reinventing Wheels
Japanese hybrids are hitting the road, even here

Digital Crossing at a Crossroads
A look at the two-year-old technology facilitator experiment downtown

Instapunditry

Glenn Reynolds on:

...the current anti-war movement
"I'd like to see the "peace" movement take some responsibility for the likely consequences of its views, and the deaths that may come from doing nothing. But those don't count, you see, because the United States isn't involved."

...gun rights
"Gun rights supporters should be very unhappy with Bush, as the Justice Department punts on the D.C. gun ban. Apparently Ashcroft's view of the right to arms is like the beer in a beer commercial: you can pour it, show it brilliantly illuminated, talk about how good it is—in fact, do absolutely anything except actually drink it."

...his own ideology
"Mostly, I'm a proud member of the anti-idiotarian party—which is growing by leaps and bounds, as best I can tell. And which, judging by the likes of Sean Penn and Trent Lott, won't lack for targets anytime soon."

..."anti-sodomy" laws still on the books
"Conservatives have long said that they want to get the government off our backs. If that's a principled stance, they should certainly want to get it out of our beds."

Glenn Reynolds: the most famous Knoxvillian you never heard of

by Katie Allison Granju

Glenn Reynolds says he has had only one real "fan moment" here in his hometown of Knoxville. He was at a bookstore wearing a t-shirt advertising his website, Instapundit.com, when an excited local approached, asking "Do you read that site too?"

Reynolds briefly considered telling the woman that not only does he read Instapundit, but that he runs it, but decided against it.

"Yeah, I read it," he answered modestly.

Reynolds' relative anonymity in Knoxville stands in contrast to his rising national profile as the man who has led the Internet "blogging" revolution in the past two years. The word "blogging" originally gained widespread usage from the company www.blogger.com, the first of a growing number of often-free online tools that allow users to instantly publish and update their own weblogs. But the term now has a life of its own, and by most estimates, thousands of new bloggers are coming online every week.

What makes a blog different from all those personal homepages that clutter the Web? In a recent article on the burgeoning blogging phenomenon entitled, "Online Uprising," American Journalism Review writer Catherine Seipp noted that, "in general, 'blog' used to mean a personal online diary, typically concerned with boyfriend problems or techie news. But after September 11, a slew of new or refocused media junkie/political sites reshaped the entire Internet media landscape. Blog now refers to a Web journal that comments on the news—often by criticizing the media and usually in rudely clever tones—with links to stories that back up the commentary with evidence."

Although there are still many blogs out there—some of them immensely thoughtful and entertaining—covering a wide variety of topics other than politics and geopolitical strategy, the most-visited blogs, like Reynolds', primarily concern themselves with the news of the day. Blogs are characterized by short, conversational posts that customarily contain a hyperlink to more information on the topic under discussion. They are generally updated frequently, often many times each day. That's been made possible by the pushbutton ease of the many Web-based blog templates that are now available. These aren't for-profit ventures; most bloggers are cyber-hobbyists who never see a penny, although some blogs offer an online "tip jar" where appreciative readers can use a credit card to make a donation. Most bloggers actively encourage their readers to email them or comment on what they have posted, thus becoming cyber-celebrities of sorts, with their own personae and following.

Knoxville's Glenn Reynolds is the undisputed Elvis of the "blogosphere" (yes, that's a real word, though only coined in the last 18 months by bloggers themselves), with his Instapundit.com blog regularly receiving 50,000 hits a day. American Journalism Review has called Reynolds' site "the Grand Central Station of Bloggerville," while Moscow's Pravda referred to it as "The New York Times of the bloggers." And speaking of the Times, it recently profiled Reynolds and his blog, following similar coverage in Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, American Lawyer, and U.S. News and World Report.

Reynolds, a boyish-looking 42-year-old UT law professor, says he started his own blogging activities "as a hobby and without any master plan." Reynolds' academic specialties have long included technology and Internet intellectual property issues, so he had tinkered around online for years before creating Instapundit.com shortly before the World Trade Center attacks in September of 2001. He chose the Instapundit moniker because he had heard it a few times describing "the generic Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, instant-TV, talking-head crowd" and thought it would be a good way to describe his own attempts at online punditry without taking himself too seriously.

This makes sense for a guy who has written scholarly books with titles such as Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy (Westview Press/1997), but who also creates and produces�music as both "Mobius Dick" and as a member of The Nebraska Guitar Militia. He has served as executive chairman of the National Space Society and as a member of the White House Advisory Panel on Space Policy. But Knoxvillians may know him better for his techno music reviews in Metro Pulse as "Electroboy" or for his online record label venture, Wonderdog Records. Reynolds is married to forensic psychologist Helen Smith. She's author of the book The Scarred Heart: Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill (Callisto Publishing, 2000) and is also producer of an upcoming documentary on the infamous East Tennessee Lillelid murder case. Reynolds prides himself as well on being a very hands-on father to the couple's seven-year-old daughter.

Leaving aside the obvious question (asked in every interview, says Reynolds) of how Glenn Reynolds manages to do all that he does in any given 24-hour period, it is this very eclecticism that makes Reynolds' editorial voice on Instapundit so engaging and popular. On any given day, visitors to the site might catch up on topics ranging from Reynolds' well-informed views on what technical failures might have led to the recent Space Shuttle catastrophe to why "libertarians have more fun." Reynolds is pro-gun, anti-militia-movement, anti-homophobia, and takes obvious delight in making relentless fun of the current manifestation of the U.S. anti-war movement. In other words, he doesn't fit neatly into any political boxes, although he has described himself as a disaffected former Democrat, telling one interviewer that he even headed up his college pro-choice organization. In his freewheeling, self-deprecating, cleverly anti-authoritarian mischief making, he sometimes comes across as an Abbie Hoffmanesque cyber-Yippie for the information age.

Despite his protestations that he isn't a right wing Republican, he has clearly been adopted by the "new Republican" voices that have sprung up in the wake of September 11. In the days immediately following the attacks, Reynolds posted information and updates on the situation to Instapundit with a lucidity and ferocity that blew other bloggers—as well as many mainstream media commentators—out of the water. People all over the country took notice, and his audience began growing exponentially, primarily via email and word-of-mouth.

"On Sept. 10, I had 1,600 page views, and I thought that was pretty good," remembers Reynolds. "A week later, I was getting five or six thousand page views a day and by Christmas, I was up to 25,000 per day."

Early on, right-leaning cable news network FOX News took notice of Instapundit, asking Reynolds to write commentary for their website. His popular column on current events ran at FOXNews.com until recently, when he was approached by a much bigger online presence, MSNBC.com, and offered a better package. Reynolds' MSNBC column can be found via MSNBC.com or by going directly to www.glennreynolds.com.

Unlike his previous FOXNews writing, the MSNBC columns are set up like a sort of "sponsored blog," mimicking both the format and the tone of Instapundit. In fact, MSNBC refers to it as a "weblog" rather than a column and the subtitle refers to "instant punditry."�MSNBC isn't alone in trying to harness some of the power and popularity of the independent bloggers. Other major media players have also begun to structure some of their online op-ed offerings more like blogs than traditional editorials.

Clearly, Glenn Reynolds' star is rising. But he admits that most of his neighbors in the West Knoxville subdivision where he makes his home have no idea who he is or what he does.

"I kind of like being unknown around town," says Reynolds with a shrug. "But it's probably true that I'm now better known by staffers on Capitol Hill than I am by people at UT."