The fact that much of the mainstream media, especially old school reporters, regards the rise of the "blogosphere" with a mixture of confusion, suspicion, and loathing, is not news. A
recent LA Times editorial by a long time journalist and J-school professor provides an excellent example of this, and a funny one too. Not funny on purpose, but because the entire editorial appears to be carved from one solid, glistening block of fail.
It's clear that the guy has no idea what blogs do, that he is not at all familiar with even the most popular and influential blogs, and that he did approximately zero research for his column. If the whole thing is meant to be some kind of meta-example of what's wrong with blogging, demonstrated by an editorial written in the style of a lazy blog post, it's brilliant. Otherwise,
not so much.
Now, whether we do any quality reporting at TPM is a matter of opinion. And everyone is entitled to theirs. So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he was including us as examples in a column about the dearth of original reporting in the blogosphere.
Now, I get criticized plenty. And that's fair since I do plenty of criticizing. And I wouldn't raise any of this here if it weren't for what came up in Skube's response.
Not long after I wrote I got a reply: "I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site. So to that extent I'm happy to give you benefit of the doubt ..."
This seemed more than a little odd since, as I said, he certainly does use me as an example -- along with Sullivan, Matt Yglesias and Kos. So I followed up noting my surprise that he didn't seem to remember what he'd written in his own opinion column on the very day it appeared and that in any case it cut against his credibility somewhat that he wrote about sites he admits he'd never read.
To which I got this response: "I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ... "
And this is from someone who teaches journalism?>
Worse (or better, if you're reading for entertainment rather than enlightenment) yet is the fact that Skube (snacks?) seems to be making a late-life career of this, as evidenced by this discussion of an editorial he wrote in 2005, also
about how blogs suck.
I asked him what blogs he had read to prepare for his column. He told me he found that to be a very strange question. "I scanned a bunch of blogs," he said, but was able to summon only one (Andrew Sullivan's) by name.
Given his statement that blogs don't do real journalism, I asked him what he thought about Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. He remembered Marshall as a magazine writer, but was unfamiliar with his blog, or its new investigative-reporting plan.
I asked him to compare the original reporting model promised by Pajamas Media with the commentary-oriented approach of the Huffington Post. He told me he didn't know either site.
Since he wanted to talk about the time factor, I asked him if he didn't find sites like Instapundit convenient ways to gain access to more information in less time. He had heard of Glenn Reynolds, and visited the site. Once.
Perhaps most incredible, he published in the Greensboro paper a column that says, "At local levels, one can imagine bloggers spurring more comprehensive coverage by mainstream media. But we are not there yet."
He did not know that Greensboro is a hotbed of local blogging, and its paper has received national acclaim (including articles in the New York Times and LA Times) for its interaction with those bloggers. I asked him what he thought of Sandy Carmany's blog. "Who?," he said.
He was uncomfortable with the lack of editors at blogs. I asked if he was familiar with the concept of peer editing, which is how blogs correct each other. He said he'd heard of it, as used by students in public schools, where "the peers who edit are the people least suited to do it."
I did more reporting about Skube's column than he did to write it.
Specific journalistic failings aside, Skube has a (misconstrued) point. Obviously, the vast majority of blogs (this one included) aren't valid sources for news or informational reporting, and aren't written with journalistic standards. Whether real news is, given the "opinions on shape of the Earth differ" style of reporting that leaves most lies (such as those promulgated by politicians) unchallenged, is another question. But whatever standards you hold up for journalism to aspire to, most blogs don't meet them. Of course the vast majority of blogs make no effort to, since they (we?) are usually more about commentary or entertainment or titty pictures than news. Which is fine; there's news on TV, but there's also a lot of entertainment, and even
newspapers cover the arts, sports, currents, movie reviews, etc.
What the better political/news blogs do well is collection and (sometimes) analysis. I read, and/or read about, dozens of news articles (by real journalists) every day, largely thanks to bloggers who post links to them. I find it ironic that Skube complains in his new editorial that no one has time to read blogs for news. I'd say that's exactly backwards; who has time to wade through hundreds of news items a day to remain informed? Skimming the ever-updating headlines on CNN or BBC or local papers, then slogging through dozens of articles to find out what's going on would take hours. Instead of that a person can just read half a dozen good bloggers who provide links to and commentary/analysis on the day's big and small news, and get the same job done in a fraction of the time.
The time investment difference there seems pretty clear, and sure, you'd learn more from reading the original articles, time permitting, but that's only provided you could remember and retain it all, and you knew enough to put it into context. I regularly read bloggers who specialize in constitutional law, or science, or politics, since they know a great deal about their areas of specialty, and can put some new news item into context, while providing links and background information I do not possess.
Labels: blogs
