Who Is Veblen? Anonymous Local Blogger Allows A Glimpse Behind His Curtain

Who is Thorstein Veblen?

The question has become a popular parlor game over the past few years, at least for State College reporters. Through his ‘Left of Centre’ blog, Veblen delivers some of the most sharp, piercing takes on Centre Region news and trends, particularly those involving Penn State.

He routinely flays university President Graham Spanier. He pokes holes in official university statements and arguments. He scours university-related news coverage and public information to find key issues worth his searing analysis.

But Veblen — a pen name — has been anonymous since his blog burst onto the local scene in August 2006. He borrows his moniker from the real Thorstein Veblen, the late American scholar who studied evolutionary economics and sociology in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Now Veblen — the latter-day version — has offered some new insight into what makes him tick.

In a recent e-mail interview with StateCollege.com, he carefully maintained his anonymity, but allowed that the ‘roots of ‘Left of Centre’ actually go back nearly three years’ before his first blog post in 2006.

It was back then, he alleged, that Old Main pushed out two faculty members who loudly criticized the university’s Commonwealth Campus policies. Veblen believes the faculty members, Nona Gerard and Mo Nouri, were dismissed because their criticism was a threat — a threat to how the Middle States Commission on Higher Education might assess the Penn State Commonwealth Campus system, he wrote.

Around the same time, Veblen wrote, he began taking a closer look at the Spanier administration. Veblen believes that its ‘corporate authoritarian management style (stands) in opposition to the academic ideal of shared governance … .’

As Veblen came to these conclusions, he wrote, he shared his thoughts mostly with friends and acquaintances. This was still around 2003, his account suggests.

‘At the same time, I became aware that the local coverage of Old Main was very shallow,’ Veblen wrote. ‘The (Centre Daily Times) printed a lot of Old Main press releases with little modifications and the editorial board, when it did write something critical of Penn State, was very easily intimidated into backing off.

‘I came to realize, by late summer of 2006, that the best way to get my findings out to the wider public was to start a blog, and ‘Left of Centre’ was born.’

Establishing his niche – and an audience

So I asked Veblen how he sees his role, what he wants his function to be.

‘My role is to question authority and cut through the bull…,’ he responded. ‘I want people to have the good information needed to make decisions. I also hope that people would be inspired to be more skeptical of Old Main and Spanier.’

According to data released by Veblen, ‘Left of Centre’ saw more than 1,400 unique visitors in the first three months of this year — and again in the second quarter. That’s up significantly from the 450 unique visitors who visited the blog in the last quarter of 2006, shortly after the blog launched, the data show.

‘A great deal’ of the traffic comes from University Park, Veblen wrote. ‘In particular, during the academic year, the Collegian IP (addresses) show up quite a bit. I’ve got a minder in Old Main who reads the blog faithfully every day that I’m posting.

‘There are days where that’s followed by a flurry of visits from all over Old Main,’ he continued. ‘Last year, I wrote a post revealing how much Penn State payed out in settling a particular lawsuit. For a few months, someone at McQuaide Blasko (a local firm that handles some university legal work) became a regular reader.’

Among regular visitors, Veblen wrote, are IP addresses still registered to Knight Ridder, the former corporate owner of the Centre Daily Times. (The now-defunct newspaper company sold off its assets, including the CDT, in 2006.)

Veblen also gets ‘quite a bit of traffic from the House and Senate in Harrisburg and an occasional visit (from) the U.S. House and Senate.’

Measuring blogospheric success

This might come as a surprise, but Veblen says he tends ‘not to think about whether the blog is a success.’

‘If I can change university policy around the margins, I’d be very happy,’ he wrote. ‘ … For me, the pleasure comes from the intellectual challenge of finding a better approximation to the truth than is widely available.’

Veblen often posts links to his work in the relevant comment sections of higher-traffic news websites, he wrote, trying to bring attention and traffic to his posts. But it’s hard to say whether his posts have a direct impact on university policies and practices, he acknowledged.

He used his commentary on the university’s dance marathon, or THON, to illustrate the point. Veblen argued on ‘Left of Centre’ that the student-run fundraiser lacked transparency, then posted a link to his argument via The New York Times’ ‘Freakonomics’ blog.

‘This year, both THON and the Four Diamonds Fund (its beneficiary) issued ‘annual’ reports with some details about how the money is spent — still not an independent accounting of things, but a change of policy,’ Veblen wrote. ‘Did my blog posts and comments at ‘Freakonomics’ result in the policy change? I would like to think so, but I don’t know for sure.’

And while Veblen has never heard from anyone in a position of authority at Penn State, he wrote, ‘let me take this opportunity to invite them to comment on my posts.’

Tweaking the media

Outside the Penn State public-information unit, which Veblen dubs ‘The Old Main Propaganda Shop,’ reporters may well be his single biggest audience, he wrote.

He doesn’t have any formal training in journalism, he indicated. At times, ‘whenever I come across something that I think deserves a bigger audience than ‘Left of Centre’ can offer, I will contact a reporter.

‘Also, from time to time, a lead that I’ve developed requires the sort of skills and contacts that I don’t have,’ Veblen explained. ‘In those cases, rather than putting up a half-baked blog post, I’ll try to get a reporter interested in moving the ball further.’

But he doesn’t seem to have much regard for a lot of the local reportage in the Centre Region.

The Centre Daily Times, Veblen wrote, ‘was much tougher on the university’ when Lou Heldman was publisher. Heldman held the top role at the newspaper for six years ending in December 2001.

(Full disclosure: I worked at the CDT both during and after Heldman’s leadership — and as an intern at The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle when Heldman was publisher there. I should also disclose, in the interest of transparency, that Veblen has publicly praised my own work. But that’s not why I’m writing about him. Anyway, onward.)

‘CDT has declined even further as a result of the McClatchy debt load and the general decline of newspapers,’ Veblen wrote. The CDT became a McClatchy-owned newspaper in 2006, when Knight Ridder collapsed under investor pressure.

But what of The Daily Collegian? Or Voices of Central Pennsylvania?

In Veblen’s assessment, The Collegian ‘was once a very good alternative to the CDT, but it, too, has slipped this past year.’

And Voices ‘at one time was a good source for news,’ he wrote. ‘Today it is a hit-or-miss thing with too much left-wing propaganda — I don’t like propaganda no matter who writes it.’

Onward State, a popular blog run by Penn State students, ‘had a very promising freshman year, but it has suffered a sophomore slump,’ Veblen wrote. ‘Now too many of their writers are Spanier boosters. They need to do some soul-searching this summer.’

Looking to the future

OK, so a few final questions for Mr. Veblen:

Does he make any money off of his blog?

‘I’ve never tried to monetize the ‘Left of Centre’ and never will.’

Is there any chance he might reveal his (or her) identity?

‘The firing of two tenured faculty critics of Spanier’s policy was one of the motivating factors for starting this blog,’ Veblen wrote. ”nough said.’

What does the future hold for ‘Left of Centre’?

‘I’ll be blogging as long as Old Main remains mendacious,’ he wrote.

‘I’ll be blogging for a long time.’