You’re making two main assertions here. (1) Since Doc Searls can never remove information from Google, but can only add to it, he can never suppress the information on Stephen Kurkjian’s yellow journalism that you are providing. (2) Since The Globe was the only medium available to you before the Internet, they were the final gatekeeper. I disagree with both.

On the first point, although you’re technically right that Doc Searls could not have your post removed from Google’s index, he could make it effectively inaccessible by drowning you out, as you observe. Whether or not this is his intention seems irrelevant. (Do you disagree?) I would argue that if your criticism of Stephen Kurkjian’s corrupt and unethical practices was the 10,000th result in the Google listings for his name, rather than the 4th result, it would be no more effective in affecting public discourse than your hypothetical escapade in the Boston Common. In fact, I’d say it would be as if you had never written the post at all.

On the second point, I defer to Seth’s remark above.

Regarding: “As far as I know, that left the ocean of Globe readers exactly zero ways to find other public responses to the news.”

Why do you think this? If you believe doing a google search on reporter’s name is a counterbalancing way for *Globe* readers to find public responses to the news, then why not letters or columns in other local papers, such as e.g. the _Herald_ or the _Phoenix_? You could have tried to interest those editors, or media columnists. You could have tried journalism review publications (which, actually, might be a much better target audience than hoping random Google searchers stumble across a blog post). This exemplifies a tendency to talk-down all the avenues that do exist, but we know are ineffective in practice (going around to various other publications), and talk-up an avenue that’s favored, but also seems ineffective overall (random related Google searches).

And that fact that a gatekeeper can’t take back what’s been let through the gate hardly disproves their gatekeeperness. Remember the cliche, “Oh no, I’ve created a monster” (== can’t undo what’s been done).

That Doc Searls is a gatekeeper is shown unarguably by the fact that so many people talked about and linked to my post after he was kind enough to put it through his blog-gate.