Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

"1. Mainstream, top-down, professional journalism will continue to play a vital role in covering news events, and in shaping our interpretation of those events, as it should."

I'm rather surprised, David, at your apparently wholehearted approval of this sort of thing. Why do you think this is heading in the right direction? It seems to me like status quo ante mindset, removing even the possibility that people writing outside of "professional journalism" might matter with regard either to "coverage" (a term that surely needs reframing) or interpretation.

For the forseeable future, Tom, I think professional journalism will indeed be responsible for covering news events. I agree that "covering" is a wild term that merely seems tame, but, whatever it is, that's what the pros will do.

I don't see an alternative at the moment. I'd love to be flabbergasted.

The main thing about this list, though, is to keep the MSM from having a good old time beating up on blogs for a position very few bloggers hold (I think), as if it's news.

David, this is not a personal reference to you, but in general, I really wish I could write something like "If you're an A-lister about to write an article pointing out one of those supposed refutations of Z-lister frustrations, get yourself a new topic", because we've heard it already - and have any hope that it would stick.

Much of the journalistic critique of blog evangelism focuses on issues of outsourcing and partisanship, as those are topics which most affect journalists, and are very immediate. There is much less interest in promoting various small data-mining and unpaid-freelancing efforts, even if these are pet projects of certain people who may (or may not) be quoted in the critique article.

While it would be nice if no article had any overstatement or simplification, I think that's also being used as a way of dismissing important refutations.