Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
Bloggers give the media a healthy warning
 Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:46 am
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Bloggers give media a healthy tweaking
Steve Orr
Staff writer
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050227/BUSINESS0102/502270337/1001/BUSINESS
(February 27, 2005) — These days, there is great fascination in the rolling disagreements between the mainstream media and some members of the nation's ever-growing blogging community.
Major newspapers and television networks are increasingly under fire from the blogosphere, as it is known. Lapses in reportage and news judgment, both real and imagined, are frequently targeted by bloggers of all political persuasions.
At the same time, bloggers are increasingly acting as independent journalists, bypassing the MSM (mainstream media) and reporting independently on issues of the day. Their latest triumph is exposing the phony correspondent "Jeff Gannon," who carried a pro-Republican agenda and a questionable past into the White House briefing room.
All of this has led to a great gnashing of teeth in the halls of the MSM, where upstart competitors and shrill critics aren't always greeted too fondly.
Most level-headed MSMers, though, view media criticism and independent reporting as positive developments (with the usual caveat that bloggers, like newspaper journalists, need to be fair and open about what they're doing).
Of course, it's easy for me to say that: Bloggers rant endlessly about The New York Times and the Fox News Channel, but the Democrat and Chronicle has stayed largely under the radar.
I spent several hours recently looking for bloggers who devote themselves to critiquing our newspaper. I found no local folks who make a full-time endeavor of it, though I did run across some who occasionally comment, not always favorably, on what we do or don't do here at the paragraph factory.
Most recently, in a hall-of-mirrors thing, several critics blogged about an editorial we published on blogging. Some liked it, some didn't.
Locally, bloggers don't tend to break major news on their own very often, at least that I've seen.
It's hard, and only some bloggers can pull it off.
But those who can't still have a great future — because, to me, the best part of public affairs blogging is the way bloggers can seize on a news story or an issue and start gnawing, ferreting out fresh facts, exposing untruths, analyzing things in a thought-provoking way and, yes, hacking away at MSM outlets that aren't doing their job.
Where all of this leads, I have no idea. But some bloggers do.
Here's a recent snippet from Chuck Simmins, an intriguing local blogger who posts at blog .simmins.org:
"This is the future of news. Old media will be held to the same standard that bloggers are. News has to be well researched, sources cited, corrections noted, and contributors linked. And it all has to be done quickly. The public's right to know is turning into 'the public knows.' You don't need to graduate from j-school to write the news in the Internet age." |
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