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IN COMMON: I.F. Stone, the blogger before there were blogs
(The following is an addendum to today’s IN COMMON column on journalist I.F. Stone.)
Dan Froomkin noticed it first, and said so last July in a post on the Nieman Foundation’s website at Harvard:
“The best blogger ever died in 1989 at the age of 81,” Froomkin wrote.
“Although [I.F.] Stone worked for decades vigorously tweaking authority as a daily journalist, editorial writer and essayist, it was in 1953 that he created the perfect outlet for his extraordinary mind, starting I.F. Stone's Weekly, easily the scrappiest and most influential four-page newsletter ever sent through the U.S. mail….
“In many ways, the Weekly was a blog before its time. In format, it was a combination of articles, essays and annotated excerpts from original documents and other people's reporting — just like a blog.”
The Weekly’s format was a purposefully staid and conservative vehicle to carry sometimes radical ideas.
And “In content, it was a far cry from the passionless prose that afflicts so much mainstream political reporting,” Froomkin continued. And “Like so many of today's top bloggers, Stone built a community of loyal readers around his voice — an informed voice, full of outrage and born of an unconcealed devotion to decency and fair play, civil liberty, free speech, peace in the world, truth in government, and a humane society.”
There was also a built-in mechanism to guard against what Jay Rosen has called the “misguided contrarianism” of much blogging. Stone placed emphasis on texts and facts, on what he could confirm was said and done, not on suspicion or political psychologizing.
But one notion about the Weekly and Stone persists, and Froomkin’s description – and his easy parallel – unintentionally allows it to persist: that Stone was an iconoclast bent principally on pulling down idols. Just as, the parallel would go, bloggers have come to do.
Izzy was a troublemaker. His prose neatly, week after week, afflicted the politically comfortable. But any attempt to see Stone’s mission as solely that will have to contend with this, from Izzy himself:
“I don’t think the primary job of a free journalist in a free society is digging out the dirt. That’s part of it, I suppose. The real problem is to provide greater understanding of the complexities in which your country and your people and your time find themselves enmeshed. That’s our job, to translate these issues, to study them. The primary job is not to disgrace anybody or defame them, but to provide understanding.”
Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence
Dan Froomkin noticed it first, and said so last July in a post on the Nieman Foundation’s website at Harvard:
“The best blogger ever died in 1989 at the age of 81,” Froomkin wrote.
“Although [I.F.] Stone worked for decades vigorously tweaking authority as a daily journalist, editorial writer and essayist, it was in 1953 that he created the perfect outlet for his extraordinary mind, starting I.F. Stone's Weekly, easily the scrappiest and most influential four-page newsletter ever sent through the U.S. mail….
“In many ways, the Weekly was a blog before its time. In format, it was a combination of articles, essays and annotated excerpts from original documents and other people's reporting — just like a blog.”
The Weekly’s format was a purposefully staid and conservative vehicle to carry sometimes radical ideas.
And “In content, it was a far cry from the passionless prose that afflicts so much mainstream political reporting,” Froomkin continued. And “Like so many of today's top bloggers, Stone built a community of loyal readers around his voice — an informed voice, full of outrage and born of an unconcealed devotion to decency and fair play, civil liberty, free speech, peace in the world, truth in government, and a humane society.”
There was also a built-in mechanism to guard against what Jay Rosen has called the “misguided contrarianism” of much blogging. Stone placed emphasis on texts and facts, on what he could confirm was said and done, not on suspicion or political psychologizing.
But one notion about the Weekly and Stone persists, and Froomkin’s description – and his easy parallel – unintentionally allows it to persist: that Stone was an iconoclast bent principally on pulling down idols. Just as, the parallel would go, bloggers have come to do.
Izzy was a troublemaker. His prose neatly, week after week, afflicted the politically comfortable. But any attempt to see Stone’s mission as solely that will have to contend with this, from Izzy himself:
“I don’t think the primary job of a free journalist in a free society is digging out the dirt. That’s part of it, I suppose. The real problem is to provide greater understanding of the complexities in which your country and your people and your time find themselves enmeshed. That’s our job, to translate these issues, to study them. The primary job is not to disgrace anybody or defame them, but to provide understanding.”
Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence
posted by The Phoenix Files at
8:14 AM
4 Comments:
your right "the weekly" was like that....i met him when i was in college like 68 or 69 i believe. he was a friend of my political science professor. he told good stories.
You are not going to get many comments about i f stone because people really don't know that much about him. But all they have to understand is that he was a communist and spent much of his writing time putting down the US in favor of the great red revolution. Che had a gun stone a pen....Not much differance!
Stone was born Isidor Feinstein in Philadelphia. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who owned a store in Haddonfield, New Jersey.
He studied philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and as a student he wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Stone attended Haddonfield Memorial High School, where he ultimately graduated ranked 49th in his class of 52.
He started his own newspaper, the Progress as a high-school sophomore. He later worked for the Haddonfield Press and the Camden Courier-Post. After dropping out of the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the The Philadelphia Inquirer.Influenced by the work of Jack London, he became a radical journalist.
In the 1930s, he played an active role in the Popular Front opposition to Hitler.
Evidence from decrypted KGB telegrams from America to Moscow suggests that someone code-named Blin was approached by the KGB during the Second World War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were allied.
But some have suggested that Blin was Stone. But these Venona telegrams provide "no evidence" whatsoever that the KGB succeeded in recruiting Blin to do anything. There are many reasons to think Blin was someone else.
Furthermore, records of investigations of Stone through the 1970s by the FBI, CIA, Army, State Department, and U.S. Postal Service have been declassified; years of tailing by agents, informants, illegal car searches, and even pawing through his trash produced not a shred of evidence of clandestine activities.
Blogwalter...Good little history of stone. But he was a communist. Not a spy for the KGB or evidence of clandestine activity uncovered. Well thats refreshing. He was against hitler but followed stalin. Probably was only against hitler because hitler was fighting the communist in germany 1930's and then again the big showdown in 1941. The devil against the devil. Stone picks the devil.....
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