Interview with Blogger Ned Resnikoff

By The Pakistani Spectator • Jul 23rd, 2008 • Category: Interviews • No Responses

Ned Resnikoff is an NYU student, writer, and blogger at Veritosity.com and NYULocal.com. He also has bylines at Cracked.com and The Nation’s official website, and is a former intern at Ned Lamont for Senate and Talking Points Memo.

Would you please tell us something about you and your site?

Veritosity.com is a satirical national politics blog. Most of the posts have to do with highlighting the absurdity or hypocrisy of what various public figures say and do.I’m also the Opinion Editor of NYULocal.com, an online-only news source for NYU students that’s bringing the new media model of journalism of places like The Washington Independent and Talking Points Memo to NYU.

As for me, my name’s Ned Resnikoff and I’m a rising sophomore over at NYU, studying philosophy and creative writing.

Do you feel that you continue to grow in your writing the longer you write? Why is that important to you?

Absolutely. I feel like the three keys to being a successful writer are read as much as possible, write as much as possible, and collect as many new experiences as possible. I try to do all three as much as I can - writing is my passion, and the one thing I can honestly see myself doing for the rest of my life. Besides, I don’t exactly have a whole lot of other job skills. Sometimes I wish I were an accounting whiz or something so I would have a strong backup.

I’m wondering what some of your memorable experiences are with blogging?

I just got back from Netroots Nation, the big annual liberal blogging convention. I’d say that was pretty memorable - I met a lot of great people, including some whose work I’ve been reading an admiring for years, and I got to hear Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore and Lawrence Lessig speak.

What do you do in order to keep up your communication with other bloggers?

As Dylan Matthews, who you also interviewed, pointed out, this sort of small blogging community has coalesced around a bunch of liberal bloggers of our generation - me, Dylan, Matt Zeitlin, Mike Meginnis, John Cain, and others. I haven’t met any of them in person yet, but there are a few young, talented bloggers who I’ve met face-to-face: I shared a hotel room at Netroots Nation with Sahar Massachi of innermostparts.org, and I go to NYU with Alex of jouez.blogspot.com, who’s a talented gender politics blogger and should really update more (hint, hint).

Also have to give a shoutout to Jess Roy of jessandjoshtalk.blogspot.com who’s a friend and a columnist for NYULocal. She recently made hit it big with an article in New York Magazine, which y’all should check out.

What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?

I think it’s great that as technology and online tools evolve, more and more people out there are able to document things that used to slip through the cracks. Huffington Post’s “Off the Bus” is a great example of that. All of a sudden, any individual at a rally is a potential source of independent reporting or video. It means there’s a lot more dross to sift through, but at the end of the day it also means that there are more opportunities to be informed.

Do you think that these new technologies are effective in making people more responsive?

It’s a mixed bag. The same technology that allows people to absorb more information than ever also allows them to pick and choose that information more than ever. It’s so much easier to retreat inside your own little world now and never hear a contradictory viewpoint, and so it’s more up to the individual to exert some critical thinking skills and know when they’re being misled. I don’t think we know yet how that’s going to work out.

What do you think sets Your site apart from others?

Veritosity is as much a humor site as it is a political blog, so the focus is usually on mockery. It makes it more fun to write, and it lets me channel some of my political frustration into something besides anger. I grew up on The Daily Show, so I guess that attitude has influenced me a lot.

With NYULocal, we still try to keep it sort of snarky, but the Opinion section is still very much evolving. In the end, the voice of the Opinion section is going to be what the columnists and contributors make it. I’ll be there to sort of guide it, and contribute my own voice, but the goal is really to be the voice of the NYU student body.

If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

I attribute most of my successes to insecurity. If I feel like I’m not doing enough or I’m not naturally skilled enough at something, it makes me work harder at it. Probably not the most healthy tendency, but at least I’m channeling it into something productive.

What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

Uh … really hard to say, on both counts. I’m lucky to have never been the victim of any real suffering, and I’m hoping that the happiest moment of my life is still to come. I will say that I interned on the Ned Lamont Senate campaign - which was really a transformative moment in American politics and in my own life - and I invested so much in that campaign emotionally that I had some of my highest and lowest moments. I was absolutely elated when we won the primary, and inconsolable when we lost the general election. A friend of mine compared my reaction to somebody who just had a messy breakup, and that sounds about right.

If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s paid for - what would your top 3 choices be?

1.) America. As in, all of it. This is such an incredibly rich and diverse country, and I feel like I haven’t really found its heart yet. A friend of mine is actually organizing an epic three-month roadtrip through the United States next summer (which you can find out about at juanway.org), so I’m hoping that if nothing else, I’ll come out of that feeling like I’ve learned more about my home.

2.) Budapest. I believe young Zeitlin is in Budapest as we speak, and I’m incredibly jealous. It sounds like a gorgeous city, and it would be nice to get to visit a major city that not as many American tourists get to.

3.) Greece or Rome: I’m a sucker for history of the ancient world, particularly Roman history and Greek mythology and philosophy. It would be wonderful to wander through the Coliseum or see Parthenon.

What is your favorite book and why?

That’s got to be the hardest question yet. I’m a really voracious reader, to the extent that I can’t ever not be in the middle of a book. I will say though that I just finished reading Ham On Rye and loved it. I’ve been meaning to read Bukowski for a very long time, and I’m glad I finally did. He has this wonderful way with words that’s both plainspoken and incredibly poetic. It’s not a combination very many other authors can pull off.

What’s the first thing you notice about a person (whether you know them or not)?

I think it’s really important for people to be passionate about something larger than themselves, and people who aren’t kind of bug me. If a person’s interests don’t extend very far beyond self-gratification, it’s usually pretty easy to find out in the first twenty minutes or so of conversation.

Is there anyone from your past that once told you you couldn’t write?

Do I count? All my friends and family are really supportive, and I tend to get good grades in writing courses, but I’m constantly second-guessing my own writing. I’ll write something and think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written and then come back the next day and want to delete the whole thing because I think it’s awful.

How bloggers can benefit from blogs financially?

I don’t know, but I sure wish someone would tell me. I guess the best thing to do is get hired by a preexisting publication and get paid to blog.

Is it true that who has a successful blog has an awful lot of time on their hands?

You’d have to ask someone with a successful blog. My guess is that it depends - I’m sure some bloggers get to bang out a couple posts a day and then go out for drinks, but guys like Duncan Black, AKA Atrios, seem to be in front of their computer writing posts constantly.

What role can bloggers of the world play to make this world more friendlier and less hostile?

Uh, I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask that. Veritosity can get pretty hostile at times, but I like to think that I’m always being pretty fair and only excoriating people who deserve it. Besides, all the people I make fun of are more famous than I am, so if Tom Friedman happens to read my blog and get his feelings hurt, I guess he can just roll around in his giant money pile or something to take his mind off it.

Who are your top five favourite bloggers?

Besides the people who I’m friends with? In no particular order:

Spencer Ackerman - Spencer’s got a great writing style that I think I sometimes unconsciously emulate. Not only is he a good investigative journalist and a really knowledgeable national security analyst, but he’s also one of the few people left on this Earth who’s legitimately 100% punk rock. You have to admire that.

Matthew Yglesias - He does a good job of laying out policy-heavy, kind of wonky arguments in really clear, accessible language. He’s also got a great sense of humor, and you’ve got to love the geeky comic book references he manages to insert into complex policy debates. Green Lantern theory of foreign policy, anyone?

Steve Benen - The Carpetbagger Report somehow manages to stay on top of every significant political campaign story simultaneously while also providing in-depth analysis of them. The only possible explanation is that there are actually five or six Steven Benens working around the clock.

Kevin Drum - Kevin Drum is pretty much the voice of reason in any discussion. Sometimes I feel like he may be too cautious in his analysis, but most of the time he’s the most even-headed blogger I know.

Josh Marshall - My former boss when I interned at TPM, although I’ve only spoken to him once or twice. Josh is the mastermind behind the whole TPM media empire, which is probably the most successful example of how to integrate blog-style commentary with original reporting. I mean, these guys slew the career of the Attorney General of the United States. Clearly, they know what they’re doing.

Is there one observation or column or post that has gotten the most powerful reaction from people?

On NYU Local, I wrote a column about war profiteers and private contractors in Iraq that caused some pretty heated debate in the comments section. That was pretty gratifying - most of them time I don’t get a whole lot of dissent in my comments, and it was nice to see people disagreeing with me.

What is your perception about Pakistan and its people?

I’m going to confess to not being the most informed guy in the world when it comes to Pakistani internal politics, but I am disappointed by how profoundly undemocratic Musharraf’s administration is. It’s very encouraging and inspiring to have seen how much civil disobedience and dissent the 2007 state of emergency resulted in.

Have you ever become stunned by the uniqueness of any blogger?

The potential for diversity and the fact that anyone can start a blog is one of the great things about the medium, and so I’m never really stunned when I come across something that hasn’t been done before. That being said, Fafblog has to be one of the most weirdly inventive blogs I’ve ever read.

What is the most striking difference between a developed country and a developing country?

I think in a lot of cases, “developed” and “developing” are euphemisms that don’t really tell us a lot about what’s actually going on within a country. That being said, “developing” is frequently used as a euphemism for countries that are being gutted by large corporations seeking cheap labor, and it’s really striking how wide the gulf in between the rich and the poor is in those countries.

What is the future of blogging?

I’ve got absolutely no idea. I think in general, blogging prognosticators tend to be full of it - the fact is, I doubt anyone could have predicted this is where we would end up when people first started blogging.

You have also got a blogging life, how has it directly affected both your personal and professional life?

I don’t really have a professional life yet - I’m just a college student. But I guess it’s helped me make some invaluable contacts for when I graduate. It’s also probably closed some doors to me - I doubt anyone at The Washington Post would hire me if they did a quick Google search and found out how mean I’ve been to their editors. But in general, it’s probably helped.

As for my personal life, I don’t think blogging’s affected it too much, thank god. I mostly stay away from blogging about my personal life, partially because I’m sort of a private person by nature and partially because I don’t think anyone’s particularly interested in reading about what I had for lunch today.

What are your future plans?

1.) Go on the JuanWay Tour across America.

2.) Graduate college.

3.) Get a job as a journalist or political commentator somewhere.

4.) Finish that novel I’m working on. Write several more.

5.) Become rich and famous and spend the rest of my life writing and partying on my private island.

As long as I get to write, though, I’ll probably just settle for four out of five.

Any Message you want to give to the readers of The Pakistani Spectator?

I’m sorry, I guess? I always feel the need to apologize for our current government and administration when talking to people outside the country. Sure, I didn’t vote for President Bush, but the fact is that it’s our collective apathy as a country that allowed for so many of the disasters the world faces today, such as the Iraq War and the blank check our president continues to write to the Musharraf regime.