Atrios

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Duncan Bowen Black (born February 18, 1972), better known by his pseudonym Atrios (IPA pronunciation: [ˈeɪ tri oʊs]), is an American liberal blogger living in Philadelphia. His weblog Eschaton is one of the most popular political weblogs, receiving an average of over 100,000 hits every day.^[1] Black was also a regular commentator on Air America Radio's The Majority Report.

1 Biography
2 Eschaton
- 2.1 Examples of content
3 Trivia
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Black obtained a Ph.D. in economics from Brown University in 1999. He has worked at the London School of Economics, the Université catholique de Louvain, the University of California, Irvine, and, most recently, Bryn Mawr College. He is now a Senior Fellow at the media research group Media Matters for America.

Black began his online political life as Atrios, remaining pseudonymous for several years, and even joking that he was actually a high school gym teacher. According to Black, the name "Atrios" is actually a (misspelled) reference to a character named Antrios in the Yasmina Reza play 'Art' who paints the play's key "white painting on white canvas".

Before starting Eschaton, Black wrote (as Atrios) for the webzine Media Whores Online (now defunct). During the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, he revealed that he had accepted a job at Media Matters for America and allowed his name and photograph to be published. He later said that as an academic he blogged pseudonymously to avoid attacks like those later unleashed on Timothy Shortell.^[2]

[edit] Eschaton

Black's weblog Eschaton is one of the most popular weblogs for left wing politics in the United States.^[3] According to Black, the name Eschaton is a reference to an imaginary sport, used in the phrase immanentize the eschaton, in the novel Infinite Jest. Black considered the term a fitting metaphor for American political discourse.

The style of Eschaton is snarkier and more personal than liberal blogs enjoying the same level of traffic such as Daily Kos, generally featuring short entries on a variety of topics ranging from policy commentary to breaking news and links. Mockery of right-wing figures who are seen as buffoonish is a familiar staple. Posts are frequent — on the order of ten every day. The majority of posts are authored by Black (as Atrios), but there are occasional guest bloggers.

On June 29, 2005, Black reacted to possible Federal Election Commission regulations that he feared would impinge upon bloggers' right to support and solicit donations to political candidates, by repurposing Eschaton as "An Online Magazine of News, Commentary, and Editorial" instead of a "blog." As there was no accompanying change in content style, it can be assumed that Black was mocking the proposed regulations which would differentiate between the "online magazines" and blogs by asserting that the two terms are interchangeable.

[edit] Examples of content

Eschaton has a number of tropes verging on in-jokes:

On Fridays, Black usually posts photographs of his cats, a practice originated by Kevin Drum and known as catblogging.
Black usually names a "Wanker of the day", meaning the most egregious example of media reporting that follows Republican Party talking points.
After a bet between commenters Holden and others over whether the job approval rating for President Bush would fall below 40 percent by July 2005, Black began titling posts about the falling poll numbers as "Holden gets a pony", accompanied by a photograph of a toy horse (often My Little Pony).
After a period of scandals involving professional journalists such as as Jayson Blair, Jeff Gannon and Judith Miller was followed by a number of columnists criticizing the supposed inaccuracy, anonymity, unprofessionalism, and unaccountablity of blogs, Black began tagging items about professional journalism which exhibited these traits with "Time for a blogger ethics panel."
As support for Connecticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont, Black prefaces stories about the race with "Nedrenaline", as a joke on Lamont's incumbent opponent Senator Joe Lieberman, who used the term "Joementum" during his 2004 Presidential bid.
Repeatedly using the neologism Friedman as a unit of time (six months). The Friedman, sometimes abbreviated as FU for Friedman Unit, was coined in mock tribute to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, based on his repeated optimistic predictions that within six months of the time of his writing, the success or failure of the American project in Iraq would be known.