The new Sid Backstrom motion to sever gets all exercised about the continued interest in these cases from a couple of blogs. And they’re reading closely! They’ve even noted Lotus’s comment that the Tupelo Daily Journal did not run its blog story on its web page.
But I have a little trouble taking all this so seriously. By my back-of-the-envelope calculation there may be a couple of thousand people in Mississippi who have ever looked at Folo. There are two million people in the state. And about half (maybe a tad less) are in the Northern District of Mississippi, so I’d guess maybe a tenth of a percent of the residents of that district have glanced at this web page.
As much as I may respect Alan Lange at Ya’ll Politics and David Rossmiller at the Insurance Coverage Blog, from their respective seats in Jackson and Oregon (that’s right, Oregon), I doubt if their audience in the N.D. Miss. is one whole helluva lot larger. Rossmiller probably gets more attention in South Mississippi because of his long commitment to writing about the Katrina cases and the issues involved there, and both have been more noticed in North Mississippi since the eruption of U.S. v. Scruggs.
What there is is a group of readers with a fair degree of sophistication in reading about legal issues, always avid for updates and able to comment in interesting ways, and I would suspect it’s a large group for a narrow interest blog. And I like to think it’s an influential and involved group, including people who are working on these cases. But we’re talking a drop in the bucket of North Mississippi jurors.
I mean, how many people do you know who read blogs, for heaven sakes? Some, but not a ton of them.
I’m going to point this question out to Rossmiller and Lange and see if they see this differently.
Update: First sentence corrected based on LydiaLaw comment below.
Yeah, NMC, and not to mention that some percentage of folks are foodies here just for our gumbo and comeback sauce and whatnot.
[edited by site-owner. nah@nah.com is not a working email address, which every folo commenter must provide (put "Scruggs-blogging ethics" in folo's Search box, click, and read the second entry there). "nah," you're welcome back, but not in stealth, so sign in again with a working address and you'll be fine.]
If there’s a trial, one of the questions to anonymous, potential jurors will no doubt be “have you ever visited the folo blog.”
I wish I could be there to see the “pig staring at a clock” looks that will be on the faces of the jurors.
707, NAAS — I love that! (Gonna bum it too, just so’s you know.)
NMC, I certainly have a good feel for overall traffic on YP, but I can’t say what percentage of that is in North Miss. It’s obvious from the mentions of the blogs in the various pleadings that at the very least the Scruggs attorneys are reading these very closely (hi guys).
I think the impact is a little more than you might have let on, but not enough to substantially tamper with due process or to taint a jury pool. There are two impacts that are pretty clear to me.
1. We collectively have certainly deconstructed some very complex issues and relationships so that the mainstream press can get their heads around some things and move it to larger audiences.
2. The people that read blogs are often opinion leaders. They are people that want to know “what’s going on”. A lot of data we put out gets filtered through these opinion leaders and talked about over the water cooler, etc. In a state the size of MS, that’s pretty tangible.
I concur. Even the docs in my office, educated as they may be, and mostly natives of the area in contrast to myself,know what they know about this from TV and the newspapers and mostly have little interest in anything but March madness and not the legal kind. Doc Foglesong lights up more eyes than does Zach Scruggs.
My office staff with some college have to have ‘blog’ ‘troll’ defined for them but not gumbo I might add.
I cant even get my own office to look at my blog for a favor….
I plan to drop Scruggs into it even though its about medicine and Nature Photography
One more thing. This conversation got me thinking . . . have the Scruggses or Backstrom put one exculpatory FACT out there. They have hemmed and hawed about process and venue and severance and jury pools and media and evidence and everything else . . . but if they are so worried about the public perception of their clients’ guilt, doesn’t it stand to reason that they actually produce some evidence that they didn’t do what they were accused of? . . . unless, of course they did.
It just seems like we are overdue for some meat on the bone of the defense story. So far, from my vantage point, it’s pretty thin.
NatLov, your photo-blog is WONDERFUL, and if you say the word, I’ll link it here for a treat everybody deserves. (Thank you so much — great things to see first-off in the AM.)
Alan 7, excellent point.
*Yawns and squints*
Am I being blonde again or has the coffee not kicked in?
The thread says new severance by Zach…I thought it was Backstom who filed that. I don’t see another one for Zach on Pacer unless I am suffering from one of the two conditions previously stated.
You’re right Lydia.
Mawnin’, Lydjah and NMC. So he didn’t join Sid on the motion, NMC?
I’m getting confused too (in my case, for lack of enough tea).
He did join in the motion, as I noted elsewhere. However, it was Sid’s to begin with, and so I corrected that first sentence.
Here’s Rossmiller’s post that discusses the blogs and readership issues.
Hmmm. The mysterious nah has posted a couple of smart-alecky remarks on the Rossmiller site, and was told to head on back to Natchez.
That’s funny, Dragoman. And . . . somehow . . . not a surprise.
lotus, The movie title you were all asking about was nahblogger@Fatalattraction.net
mag, you a stitch, girl. I dunno know what we’d do without you around here.
Note: I was wrong that Zach joined in the motion to reconsider on severance filed by Sid Backstrom