Josh Wolf Spars With Stephen Colbert

Journalist, activist and vlogger Josh Wolf made an appearance on the Colbert Report last night, and traded barbs with the faux-fascist funnyman in a five-minute interview. “The independent press is just as valuable to information in the marketplace for ideas as the mainstream press,” Wolf argued when asked to justify calling what he does journalism.

The writers on the Colbert Report have proven very web savvy, and Colbert may have turned down the bombast dial on his persona a wee bit. The one prickly moment was when he pointed out that Wolf wouldn’t have been on the program had he not gone to jail. Wolf agreed, setting up Colbert for his funniest line of the night, “Have you thought of writing a thank you note to the feds?”

Since being freed from federal prison, Wolf has kept busy making media appearances, posting new video reports to his blog. San Francisco Weekly’s Matt Smith reports on Josh’s new professional project called “Media Sphere” about issues facing the freedom of the working press. He also just launched Prisonblogs.net, dedicated to giving an online voice to the incarcerated.

And to provide an example that shows the range of interests and personalities working online, you don’t have to become a freedom of speech cause célèbre to get some mainstream media coverage — producer Steve Garfield forwarded an article from the Boston Globe that profiles Nina Simonds and their friends during a production of their cooking and lifestyle show Spices of Life.

As Smith writes in his somewhat backhanded correction to his blog post about Wolf’s new professional project, “absorbing standout elements of the blogosphere may be the commercial media’s best hope.”