Bill Jacobson of Legal Insurrection

In class on Tuesday we got the chance to talk to the founder of conservative independent blog Legal Insurrection, Bill Jacobson. In our discussion we got to hear about numerous insights to the pros and cons of starting your own blog as well as the hardships that being an independent blog-owner can present. Bill, being a professor at Cornell, really emphasized the backlash he faced professionally. As most colleges are, Cornell tends to be a predominantly liberal campus and upon reading his conservative views on Legal Insurrection many parents and students wrote (sometimes harsh) letters condemning his view points.

Bill also was careful to point out that blogs (that are looking to become high-traffic sites) need to be posting at least 3-4 times a day. "People are looking for fresh content" said Bill, "if there isn't any they won't come back to your site." 

Other than the insider insight on how to create a successful blog I found a few points particularly interesting throughout our open-talk. One being the problem with the google algorithm. When scrolling through the Legal Insurrection blog we found two ads for Hillary Clinton's campaign, asking for support and donations. Being a specifically conservative/right-wing site this was very strange. Bill pointed out that this happens a lot. Google's algorithm factors in how much certain names or phrases are mentioned to produce ads for your site. So, despite the fact that when Bill writes about Hilary or other left-wing political players of the sort it tends to be negative, Google takes this as a sign to advertise left-wing ads on his site. 

Perhaps the most important take-away I got from this talk was that marking politically-driven, truth-telling journalists as "extremists"is not a strictly left-wing problem. An earlier post on my blog talked about how many critics of Izzy Stone and or subjects of his investigative journalism (which actually tended to be one in the same) wrote him off as an "extremist" or a "crazy left-wing liberal." Bill discussed how Legal Insurrection was at the forefront of coverage on the Elizabeth Warren v Scott Brown campaign in Massachusetts. Bill was consistent in calling out Elizabeth Warren on her bluffs and painting a factual picture of her relation to the Native American community. The Warren campaign was quick to label Bill as a "far-right extremist" and write off his reporting as an extension of those beliefs. This re-affirms that regardless of the political side the ugly truth being exposed by journalists is never welcomed and is usually written off by throwing out labels like "extremist" in an attempt to discredit their reporting.

Lastly, I just want to mention my favorite quote from the discussion. Bill spent quite a bit of time discussing how he deals with inappropriate comments as well as the bad-intentioned users who produce them. At one point Bill talked about emails he had received from angry users who had been blocked from commenting on the site due to inappropriate comments. A lot of the users accused Bill of silencing their freedom of speech to which Bill replied "I'm not silencing your speech, you just can't come into my house and say it."