It was an excellent response, Jay - well deserved and supported. Interestingly, the LA Times limits its comments in response to their op-eds to 300 characters (with spaces), which isn't much. You said what was needed, and there wasn't really anything I needed to add. But, I tried to put a nice pithy endorsement of your thoughts and ended up being limited to just a couple of sentences.

Posted by: Brian at August 22, 2007 7:26 PM | Permalink

So why didn't you include the exposure of G.O.P. piss-boy Jeff Gannon by Americablog?

Surely that's more newsworthy than the marketing practices of some gourmet chocolate nobody has heard about.

Beltway insider types were understandably defensive about a whore doing exactly what they were doing, on bended knee, in the Bush White House. But the exposure of Guckert truly was a great moment for the blogs.

Posted by: Scott McClellan at August 22, 2007 7:30 PM | Permalink

Brian -- No word counts here, though the comments are moderated & sometimes take quite some time to be approved.

Posted by: Matt Welch at August 22, 2007 7:42 PM | Permalink

Thanks, Jay!

Skube just got this wrong from start to finish. Still, I'd still like to think that Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over.

Matt, I hope we've had enough of blogger bashers at the LA Times. It's hard enough having to read through Jonah Goldberg's internet envy in the same day, but that at least is pure opinion (which he is entitled to) without pretenses of journalism.

Posted by: DemFromCT at August 22, 2007 8:55 PM | Permalink

I am shirah from unbossed. Thank you for recognizing the work we did in breaking the Colorado tollroad noncompete story. We did more than just break news.

This story, which was put together and made public with the help of many in the blogosphere, became a rallying point for change in Colorado. It led to changes in the law and helped the public understand an issue - highway privatization - that had seemed to complicated for the ordinary person to get.

We treat the public as able to understand complicated and important issues, and we do our best to write clear stories. We have also had a record of searching out information that is available but which takes time so many don't have and a bit of expertise. Examples include inspectors general reports and GAO studies.

And most of us do this in what spare time we have.

If only the paid and trained journalists showed as much zeal for finding out what is really going on and shining a big bright light on it. Instead, we get the standard "he said she said" report as job done.

Posted by: shirah at August 22, 2007 9:17 PM | Permalink

Jay -- Very good, well-reasoned, excellent examples. But I'm starting to wonder about your strategy of massive retaliation every time an old-media type steps in it. Do you have a James Carville mask somewhere?

Posted by: Dan Kennedy at August 22, 2007 9:31 PM | Permalink

Dan Froomkin's blog, right in the heart of washingtonpost.com, is regularly at odds with the editorial page.

Then there's also The Talking Dog who does original interviews with unique insight.

Posted by: DustPuppyOI at August 22, 2007 9:41 PM | Permalink

I'm starting to wonder about your strategy of massive retaliation every time an old-media type steps in it

I understand the caution, Dan, but that is not my strategy. I didn't say a word about this one. Not one word. Okay, I threw in a link to it in Blowback, but still... that is not a word.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 22, 2007 9:46 PM | Permalink

A few more that I should have included in my earlier post:

Brad Friedman's blog has extensive coverage of the electoral system issues.

We almost take for granted Crooks and Liars, spearheading video clip documentation of key issues.

Calling All Wingnuts - Aside from the impact on George Allen, there is the more recent story of John McCain needing a military escort in the Baghdad market trip.

Then there's The Freeway Blogger. :)

Posted by: DustPuppyOI at August 22, 2007 10:08 PM | Permalink

Great response Jay.

I'm still flabbergasted by Skube's original article.

The most interesting part of your Blowback -- the networked reporting that was done to create your list, with plenty of examples to spare.

Posted by: David Cohn at August 23, 2007 1:52 AM | Permalink

Little Green Footballs:

UPDATE at 8/22/07 9:30:58 pm:

Meanwhile, ask yourself what’s missing from Jay Rosen’s ridiculously slanted piece in the LA Times: The journalism that bloggers actually do.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 23, 2007 2:34 AM | Permalink

Um. How did Skube become a "professor" with just a bachelor's degree?

Here's his bio.

Here's his vita.

The latter says he did graduate work in political science at LSU, but there is no mention of attaining a graduate degree.

His bio contains this quote:

"I'm congenitally contrarian. I'm a person of many shortcomings, but I have a sense of what I'm about and there are things I do well."

One thing he doesn't do well: read blogs and really know the subject matter about which he has chosen to be contrarian.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at August 23, 2007 8:22 AM | Permalink

To the Bill Hobbs question:
Teachers with a BA or BS degree are not uncommon in journalism programs, a fact that the organized doctorate generally laments -- or opposes. Until Skube's L.A. column appeared, I wouldn't have thought twice about his teaching. Three guys who never went to grad school did a fine job initiating me into the profession. They had earned the right to teach by years of solid accomplishment, and they never failed to demonstrate that, for a journalist, learning was a lifelong obligation.

Posted by: John_Hopkins at August 23, 2007 8:59 AM | Permalink

Brilliant!

There would have never been enough time to list out all the bloggers who have made a difference so far.

Lao
An American Expat in Southeast Asia

Posted by: Lao at August 23, 2007 9:19 AM | Permalink

This got a hit on Instapundit.

He said you did pretty well even without mentioning Rathergate, Eason Jordan, and several others.

Point is made without being stated.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at August 23, 2007 10:13 AM | Permalink

But he did mention the 60 Minutes flap, as I just emailed Glenn:

September 2004. Joseph Newcomer provides comprehensive examination of disputed Killian memos in CBS report. A computer typesetting expert, he uses his knowledge to cast serious doubt on the authenticity of documents "60 Minutes" relied on in its story on President Bush's Air National Guard service.

David Cohn: agree about the crowdsourcing, which was one reason (beyond linkwhoring) I included my N&R post on the list -- it's a mode of reporting that Skube may not even know exists.

Posted by: Ed Cone at August 23, 2007 10:27 AM | Permalink

You'd think they'd understand at this late stage of the game that they should just admit the goof and correct it. I wrote about the LA Times editor's note: "The damning behavior is the refusal to admit the mistake; the game of finger-pointing; the hiding behind the gears of process; and the institutional facade that says, 'Something went awry here but we’ll never come clean because our dignity is more important than the truth.' "

Posted by: Scott Rosenberg at August 23, 2007 10:35 AM | Permalink

From Nick Anthis, who made the list:

...He included my role in the resignation of George Deutsch on the list, for which I'm honored, but I mention this primarily because I thought that this was a great example of how the old and new media should interact. I broke the original story, but Andrew Revkin of the The New York Times verified the story and put it out in the "official" print record for a wider audience (and the story I broke was a follow up to a story that Revkin had reported a week earlier). We communicated openly throughout all of this.

Although efforts such as Skube's don't help the cause, blogs and the traditional media should be complementary aspects of the same phenomenon: the dissemination of information to the public.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 23, 2007 11:14 AM | Permalink

Add up all the reporting done by every blog in America, and you get less reporting in a full year than is done every day by any one of the 1,400 daily newspapers in the nation.

You searched the earth, with help from others, and could come up with only 14 examples. Even those do mostly opinion. Yes, even Josh Marshall.

Posted by: Bill at August 23, 2007 11:51 AM | Permalink

...blogs and the traditional media should be complementary aspects of the same phenomenon: the dissemination of information to the public.

It's hard not to notice: that in the Blowback article, there are certain omissions that are staggering in their magnitude. Regarding the CBS-Killian 'memos' of Rathergate alone, Joseph Newcomer did provide useful information, but where's Buckhead? Where's PowerLine? Where's Charles Johnson?

It appears that a whole slew of bloggers who broke the story and backed CBS down are missing from this list. Funny, they're not of the political persuasion that 90% of journalists subscribe to.

Can we say 'selective omissions'? This defense of blogs shares one of the common failings we find in the MSM - what's disseminated as information to the public is just a part of it.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive at August 23, 2007 12:33 PM | Permalink

There are of course bloggers who do real investigative journalism that is factually accurate (that's really what you are on about Jay, isn't it? You don't mean bloggers who post video of disasters ... they do the beginners' reporting job of chasing fire engines or night police work but that's not what you are building your own movement around is it?) But just as in my reporting from the Middle East I could occasionally get good information in the bazaar, a real world equivalent of cyberspace, most of what I heard there was a tissue of misrepresentations and intentional lies in support of a particular world view.

Leaving Michael Skube aside, the thing that serious bloggers do not have is an institutional heft behind them, first to get access - I know Izzy Stone never interviewed people in power for their side of a story but he did have a kind of institutional history which meant that his work was read not as the product of a crank. He had a CV with employment at real institutions of journalism which gave the weekly a clout it would not otherwise have had.

Reconciling independent journalism published on-line i.e. blogging with the need for institutional bona fides to let readers know that this work conforms to a set of professional procedures is going to be difficult. How will you avoid creating an MSBM (Mainstream Blogging Media) to distinguish it from the 99.9 % mendacious, maniacal, moronic blogging trying to pass itself off as "real" journalism?

Michael Goldfarb

Posted by: Michael Goldfarb at August 23, 2007 12:52 PM | Permalink

It's hard not to notice: that in the Blowback article, there are certain omissions that are staggering in their magnitude. Regarding the CBS-Killian 'memos' of Rathergate alone, Joseph Newcomer did provide useful information, but where's Buckhead? Where's PowerLine? Where's Charles Johnson?

This was not a list of bloggers who contributed to the debate -- it was a list of blogs that did actual reliable "reporting". The right-wing blogs you mention included lots of false information regarding the Killian memos controversy; Newcomer is an appropriate cite, because his work was far more analytic in nature, and was apolitical.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at August 23, 2007 1:02 PM | Permalink

It's hard not to notice: that in the Blowback article, there are certain omissions that are staggering in their magnitude. Regarding the CBS-Killian 'memos' of Rathergate alone, Joseph Newcomer did provide useful information, but where's Buckhead? Where's PowerLine? Where's Charles Johnson?

And where were you, Insufficiently? Why didn't you offer those cites to Jay? He was very upfront about needing our (the great unwashed mass) input, so don't come crying now.

I sent in one of the links Jay used; he already knew of the blog (it's over there on the sidebar), but in 2 days he couldn't read every post of every blog to find his cites. I remembered the posts from 3 years ago, and it only took me 15 minutes to locate them, write a little html comment here per Jay's requirements, and voila - it's now on the LA Times site.

So, I ask again, if you wanted him to cite those bloggers, where were you when your input would've helped?

Posted by: fatbear at August 23, 2007 1:27 PM | Permalink

In your backyard... my Atlantic Yards Report provides daily analysis, commentary, and reportage concerning the controversial project to build an arena and 16 towers in Brooklyn, frequently scooping the dailies/weeklies, offering lengthy accounts of events (e.g., court hearings) others ignore, and providing regular press criticism.

Fun fact: Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner partnered with the New York Times Company in building the new Times Tower. My blog grew out of September 2005 report I wrote dissecting the Times's coverage:
http://www.dddb.net/php/reading/times/

Posted by: Norman Oder at August 23, 2007 1:34 PM | Permalink

Michael Goldfarb brings up a serious point about heft and institutional respect. I see it from the POV of a Daily Kos poster, where it's becoming easier to get inquiries returned compared to a few years ago, and I see it as a nonpartisan flu blogger, where participation in government and scientific meetings is the typical way, in addition to writing, that you build respect. without that, it's certainly harder to get things done.

But whether it's Marcy Wheeler blogging the Libby trial and gaining the respect of reporters for her writing, or flu bloggers gaining recognition by public health officials (links, invitiations and imitation), if you do a decent job it gets recognized. But it also means getting offline to do part of that job.

Posted by: DemFromCT at August 23, 2007 2:05 PM | Permalink

To 1:02 and 1:27,

The sites which I cited did indeed furnish 'real reporting'. They first investigated Dan Rather's fake claims based on phony documents (that's journalism, right?), then analyzed (so's that), then tested their hypotheses and presented their conclusions.

Charles Johnson's alternating graphic picture of the 'memo' (Wikipedia still has it) was worth far more than the thousands of words wasted in debating the type font of the Killian 'memo' - it made plain for all (not just journalists) to see that the 1973 'memo' was done on MS Word.

And the mere assertion that the blogs of my citations included "lots of false information" falls flat without supporting evidence.

I do apologize for not furnishing links. The names of the blogs should be sufficient, however, for those whose minds aren't slammed shut.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive at August 23, 2007 2:06 PM | Permalink

Bill, The point about blog reportage would be undermined if Jay's published list was understood as an exhaustive one. It's not meant to be every instance of reporting via blog. I could provide any number reported stories from blogs, and instances of blog-newspaper interaction, just from the local scene here in Greensboro.

Michael Goldfarb, I take your point about investigative work, but I'm unwilling to dismiss so quickly stuff like video clips of disasters. It's basic reporting, has news value, and compares to much of the content provided by professionals. One of the reasons it has value is (as demonstrated during the great tsunami) that amateurs are far more numerous and widely dispersed than pros -- their work can add to our understanding and (per David Cohn) be aggregated by other amateurs or pros to create something of even greater value. That network effect is, as I mentioned a few comments ago, a new dimension to reporting perhaps undreamt of by Skube.

Last year a local blog aggregator in Greensboro published a leaked copy of a report that led to the ouster of our police chief. Someone obtained a critical document and made it public. Was that an act of journalism? Certainly it was something other than Skube's caricature of noisy opinion, and it was the basis of a lot of subsequent journalism. I'm not sure all the old definitions apply.

Posted by: Ed Cone at August 23, 2007 2:44 PM | Permalink

> ...they should just admit the goof and correct it

Why should they, when they can always get away with sweeping it under the rug?

oh that's right. they can't anymore.

Posted by: Anna at August 23, 2007 2:57 PM | Permalink

Dear Insufficiently -

You have changed arguments mid-stream.

In your first post you excoriated Jay for not listing blogs that you qualify as "reporting" and that should therefore have been in the Blowback article. (Note that I don't visit those blogs, so I can't say they do or don't.)

My response to your first post was that Jay had asked anyone and everyone to cite specific examples for him. I did, as did others. You didn't until after it was too late. (Nor did you submit in the format Jay requested; remember he had hundreds of submissions and he needed a standardized format to make it possible for him to do his work.)

Your response? The names of the blogs should be sufficient, however, for those whose minds aren't slammed shut.

Come on - you want me to go to a blog I don't know, and search back over 2-3 years to find something you remember them posting.

And you expect Jay to use that same sort of statement in an article in the LA Times? If he were to do that, i.e., make a generalized statement without specific cite, he would be just as guilty as Skube.

p.lukasiak was making another point - we were attempting to cite blogs that report openly, not ones that report through a glass darkly. In the case of my cite, Chris Allbritton did not color his reporting from Najaf; he left political conclusions to the reader, and as can be seen from his comments sections, he has readers to the left and the right - getting kudos and taking hits from both sides.

Posted by: fatbear at August 23, 2007 3:22 PM | Permalink

What I said before is that this is my list of somewhat representative, by no means definitive or even halfway-complete list of cases, for use in my reply to Skube.

In selecting items I was not trying to do a "top ten list" or to memorialize the best, but to actively illustrate the different kinds of reporting, sifting and "checking" blogs do.

I wanted to vary the examples along several scales: left to right, yes, but also politics not-politics, "big" subject and small ones, digging and synthesizing and saturation reporting... a mix with projects that move in multiple directions, eluding the easy categories by which curmudgeons think they can handle all this.

But aren't all lists to argue about? I freely admit that my list is just my take, with a lot of assistance.

The Atlantic Yards example is one I would have loved to include, and will in an expanded list that David and I are putting together. Right, David?

This author seethes about the excluded and offers a possible one for inclusion:

American Blogger Gets Around Canandian Publication Ban. Ed Morrissey’s coverage of “Adscam” hearings revealed corruption that was credited as a key factor in sending the Liberal Party of Canada down to defeat in national elections.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 23, 2007 4:42 PM | Permalink

...eluding the easy categories by which curmudgeons think they can handle all this.

And since I didn't say so before, congrats on a good job. The piece is good.

-30-

Posted by: fatbear at August 23, 2007 5:23 PM | Permalink

Great column, and thanks for including my chocolate bizness example (which everyone should read; it's an extraordinary piece).

In addition to the reporting, the curmudgeons are blind to another important aspect of blogging. I find the expert blogs - like that of the proprietor here - invaluable. Exceptional examples include Marty Lederman's and Orin Kerr's lucid writing on national security legislation.

Much like driving and power steering, I wouldn't want to navigate the news without them. It befuddles me why mainstream outlets haven't figured this out.

Posted by: Sven at August 23, 2007 6:20 PM | Permalink

Dear fatbear,

I regret that I do not measure up to your high standards when it comes to furnishing specifics of blogs who do reporting but were omitted from the Blowback article.

I don't find it surprising that you don't know the blogs I cited. But your ignorance of them, and the omission of them in the Blowback article, both help confirm my suspicions of the press in general (this IS PressThink, right?) - that the press is biased so far left that it has no interest or curiosity outside its own cozy circles of shared information.

Being wilfully blind to half the spectrum is a notable feature of the Press, but those who claim to be Thinkers shouldn't brag of such gaps in their knowlege. Don't you ever go scouting to check up on the doings and thoughts of the enemy?

And what's with this 'through a glass darkly'? Charles Johnson's alternating display of Dan Rather's fake 'exhibit from 1973' vs vanilla MS Word of 2005 was one of the clearest demonstrations of identity ever presented to the public.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive at August 23, 2007 11:23 PM | Permalink

I like what Pajamas Media said on its front page:

Ducks in the Open: Michael Skube at the LA Times argues that “the hard-line opinions on weblogs are no substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters,” but Jay Rosen compiles counterexamples to demonstrate that the hard-line opinion of Michael Skube is no substitute for the patient fact-finding of bloggers.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 24, 2007 1:28 AM | Permalink

Skube speaks; well, sort of. The News & Record higher education reporter did a piece about the episode. Skube's lines:

Contacted Wednesday, Skube said, "I said what I want to say."

"There's a place for gatekeepers, institutional safeguards," Skube said. "Editors will challenge you, as they should. They can be exasperating. They have behind them copy editors. They can be exasperating. ... Those editors will save you from mistakes, too."

The column suggests that the flare-up is all because Skube said mean things about bloggers not being journalists and some bloggers got mad. Reading it, one would have no idea why Dan Gillmor used the words "journalistic malpractice." The problem of writing about sites you have not read--after being warned about it two years ago--got disappeared.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 24, 2007 8:45 AM | Permalink

Dear Insufficiently -

I guess I should be flattered that you consider me a journalist, although I'm not. And I note that you so easily categorize my politics, which, as I never voted for (as an example) Bill Clinton, you may well wish to rethink.

As usual, you conflate and assume (remember what Felix Unger said about that word). I was an early registered user of Red State, as well as several other blogs that would fit your definition of "the enemy," so don't start with the "blindness" routine.

My comment was and is that you were late to the party, and you wanted the rules redrawn to suit your lack of citation. One of the reasons I don't know those blogs as well as you should is that so many of their posts fit exactly that format - "proof" that the poster's cause is under attack from the nameless hordes of the "left" without citation.

If you want me to take you seriously, walk the walk - do the work. Even at this late date you haven't offered one cite.

Jay's citation of PM's post shows that at least one of the "enemy" appreciated the effort that you so easily dismiss.

-30-
(and this time I mean it)

Posted by: fatbear at August 24, 2007 9:50 AM | Permalink

Jay, I'm puzzled by your remark about firedoglake providing the 'only blow-by-blow' account of the Libby trial. I was liveblogging the first week for the Media Bloggers Association, which as you know covered the entire trial with a team approach as well as FDL. Since you're a board member of the MBA, I'm sure you're aware of that. So why the omission?

Posted by: Rory O'Connor at August 24, 2007 10:21 AM | Permalink

I think the first--the first--thought of anybody who is searching for an example for Prof. Rosen's list would be Rather and the documents.

Other examples are, of course, laudable. But few had the impact of the blogosphere's evisceration of CBS' effort to throw an election. Or took up as many cyberdoodles.

Why anybody would need that suggested to him is a question worth contemplating.

The impact of Prof. Rosen's efforts would be improved if, once or twice a week, he was able to forward another dozen.

"Here's some more examples, guys. Didn't have them in time for my last submission."

The implication would shortly be that he could keep that up indefinitely. Which would probably be true.

And every time a list came in, the recipient would curse Skube afresh. Sweet.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at August 24, 2007 11:59 AM | Permalink

Jay,

Wouldn't it really help if there was an ongoing aggregation of "new information" originating with blogs?

Delia

P.S. Maybe in could fit in with NewAssignment in some way? D.

Posted by: Delia at August 24, 2007 8:10 PM | Permalink

We're going to produce a bigger list, yes. And I suppose it would make sense to revise and continually add to it.

Rory: The short answer is... they did it better. And MBA bloggers were mentioned in my post about FDL.

This is an interesting post: A bloggers’ lynch mob forms up.

I know Skube, not well but casually, and he doesn’t deserve all this. Thus I rise to speak on his behalf.

I’ll start by conceding one point: This wasn’t Skube’s finest hour. He has acknowledged in other places that he doesn’t much read blogs, including at least one specifically mentioned in his essay. That fact was a hanging curveball for his critics to swat out of the park. If you’re going to accuse bloggers of not doing much reporting, you need to be scrupulous about your own research. Dive into the blog world before you pop off about it.

In fact, after I read the blowback on Skube, I thought to myself, “Boy, the professor just got taken to school.” But after another reading of the back-and-forth, I realized that once you separate the message from the messenger, Skube’s point is undeniably true. The blog world could do with more reporting and research, and less volume on the opinion. Furthermore, the list of reporting triumphs by bloggers that is detailed in the anti-Skube screed I link to above seems pretty thin when you consider the number of bloggers working.

I'm sure it sounds harsh to the (thoughtful) author of that post, but I think Skube does "deserve all this." If he had done some honest checking, if he had been true to his code, he would have learned that most bloggers with even a little common sense know that what they do isn't original reporting.

They don't need Skube to remind them because they aren't deluded about that. They don't present themselves as something they are not. It's Skube who is worried about the confusion. It's the Los Angeles Times that's worried about the "hard-line opinions on weblogs" being mistaken for "the patient fact-finding of reporters.”

Skube thought he was being contrarian. But he was countering a belief he and his fellow curmudgeons hold dear: that bloggers see themselves as substituting for and eventually replacing the reporting done by the professional news media. "Replacement for" is a conversation journalists largely have with themselves. (Bloggers tend to see themselves as "corrective to...") When they decide to write op-eds about this talk with themselves, the inwardness and insularity of the dialogue are painfully obvious.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 25, 2007 12:30 AM | Permalink

My kind of post...Blog ‘noise’ a legitimate source in mainstream aerospace coverage.

Not that Michael Skube’s silly Los Angeles Times column needs any further blog-flogging (go nuts if you’re interested), but here’s an interesting story on Boeing’s 787 from The Seattle Times that provides a bit more evidence of just how dumb it was.

Read the rest. Another example for our list, David.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 25, 2007 1:26 AM | Permalink

I think I am going to turn this into a separate post, but here it is for comment.

Josh Wolf, the blogger who went to jail for journalism, and who now writes at CNet, talks sense about the Skube episode:

It's clear that there are two camps on the issue, but it's uncertain what's fueling the debate. The advent of blogs have allowed a much larger segment of the population to fully participate in the marketplace of ideas. If professional journalists are so much better than their renegade counterparts, then it seems like Skube and others would have nothing to fear. On the other hand, if publishers think that the audience can't identify quality work and bloggers are willing to work at rates below press standards, then perhaps a fear that professional journalists will be replaced by bloggers at below-market rates is a rational concern. Of course, this isn't what Skube is saying, and discrediting bloggers is hardly the best way to combat this potential scenario.

Both bloggers and their news-media counterparts have the same basic goal: to inform the public about the world we live in. Their approaches vary and they both make factual errors on a regular basis, but this is a product of being human. What's important is for journalists from both the alternative and establishment camp to unify around our commonalities as opposed to proliferating barbs designed to diminish respect for the other's field.

I think Wolf has identified the hidden factor in these curmudegeon columns about bloggers. It's the words.... if publishers [or "traditional" journalists] think that the audience can't identify quality work....

Follow this with me: Skube and his fellow curmudgeons don't want to make this part of their argument explicit, because that would insult the very people they are trying to reach, the people they want to alert to the bloggers' reckless and fact-less ways. Y'all probably can't tell the difference, so I gotta warn you: these bloggers aren't real journalists.

That's the actual argument. But it's easy to see why the Skubees shrink from saying it plainly. (One irony, of course, is that curmudgeonly style pretends to be plain-spoken. But some things are just too plain to be spoken.) So instead they leave out of the text their actual fear--oh, no! people are too scattered or ill-informed to tell the difference between us and bloggers--and in its place the writer typically uses stylish put-downs of "Internet evangelists" and unnamed bloggers who are allegedly claiming that professional news operations can be replaced by the blogs. Almost always there are no names associated with this belief, no quotes, no links. That's because it's not a real argument; it's substituting for an argument the cra-mudge is too timid to make. (Second irony: cra-mudges very often identify their belief system as "contrarian," as Skube does. But some beliefs in the system are actually too contrarian to be mentioned.)

Wolf again is sensible. "If professional journalists are so much better than their renegade counterparts, then it seems like Skube and others would have nothing to fear." (A point also made by Emily Bell of the Guardian in her superb reply to celebrity curmudgeon Andrew Keen.) It's like Skube said in his first version of this column: people don't have time to read blogs. If that's true, then there is nothing to worry about.

But there is a fear, and since they lack the balls to state it, their columns tend to twist facts, evade issues, attack nameless opponents and come out in a distorted fashion that the bloggers jump on and mock. (And a "contrarian" writer often takes this as confirmation that his views usefully provoke others.)

These columns appear to be about bloggers vs. journalists. But the bloggers aren't really the subject at hand; they're foils and symbols. In reality it's traditional journalists writing about what they fear: a public that cannot discriminate once the gates are down.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 25, 2007 12:56 PM | Permalink

re:" These columns appear to be about bloggers vs. journalists. But the bloggers aren't really the subject at hand; they're foils and symbols. In reality it's traditional journalists writing about what they fear: a public that cannot discriminate once the gates are down."

that seems like a much stronger argument to me (and to some extent true) but I doubt that's it -- if that's what this is all about, why would they pick a much weaker argument? (just to severely handicap themselves?) doesn't seem to make sense...

If they do in fact fear being replaced by bloggers (that would do the job for less money), it *does* make sense (well, certainly from the self-interest POV) to tell everyone that would listen that... those people (the bloggers) are no replacement!(they just couldn't do the job...)

Delia

Posted by: Delia at August 25, 2007 10:18 PM | Permalink

re: the audience can't identify quality work

Which is the same underlying (and insulting) assumption by the bias hunters. But here's where there's also room for the Andy Cline's and Jay Rosen's.

The audience can use help identifying what the biases really are and why they exist. Not the partisan explanations that further political or ideological goals (that are true but exaggerated).

In the same way, the debate about what quality journalism is and who is a journalist (which I agree is defined only by an act), needs informed explanations to counter the j-fundy cra-mudges and iVangelist bloggers (caps in original, emphasis mine):

WHAT QUALIFIES AS A JOURNALIST? TED? ANYBODY. ANYBODY. I MEAN, I'VE BEEN-- YOU KNOW, I'VE BEEN GIVEN THIS PARTICULAR SPEECH, AS I SUSPECT YOU HAVE FOR-- 40 YEARS. YOU NEED A LICENSE TO GO FISHING. YOU DON'T NEED A LICENSE TO BE A JOURNALIST. THE NATURE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS SUCH THAT ANYONE IN THIS COUNTRY HAS ALWAYS HAD THE RIGHT TO CONSIDER HIMSELF, OR HERSELF A JOURNALIST. WHAT HAS CHANGED OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS, IS THAT WE KNOW HAVE THE TECHNOLOGICAL CAPACITY FOR EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY TO BE A JOURNALIST, AND TO REACH EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD, THROUGH THE INTERNET. THAT'S THE HUGE CHANGE. AND THAT'S WHAT WE'RE HAVING TROUBLE ADJUSTING TO. AND ONE OF THE OTHER INTERESTING PARTS OF THIS IS THAT IS THAT WHILE PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS, DIDN'T HAVE ANY PARTICULAR REQUIREMENTS OR DEGREE REQUIREMENTS WHEN THEY SAW THEMSELVES AS A PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST, THERE WERE NORMS. I MEAN, YOU-- YOU BOTH KNOW THIS BETTER THAN I AS TO WHAT IT MEANT TO DO JOURNALISM WELL. AND THOSE NORMS DO NOT APPLY TO THE BROADER CITIZEN JOURNALIST. BUT THE PRESSURE ON MORE TRADITIONAL JOURNALISTS IS, DO THEY FOLLOW THEIR OWN RULES? IN A 24 HOUR NEWS CYCLE CAN YOU GET THE SECOND SOURCE? CAN YOU HOLD BACK ON SOME INFORMATION 'CAUSE YOU'RE NOT SURE ABOUT IT? SO ONE OF MY FEARS IS THAT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST WILL CHANGE AS WELL. ACTUALLY YOU'RE-- YOU'RE TOUCHING ON A REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT POINT. BECAUSE THE FAT OF THE MATTER IS AS COMPETITIVE AS YOU AND I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN IN OUR LIVES, I MEAN, YOU KNOW, YOU'D WALK INTO THE CBS NEWSROOM OR THE ABC NEWSROOM, AND THERE WOULD BE YOU KNOW, TEN MONITORS UP THERE. AND WE WOULD ALWAYS BE WATCHING TO SEE WHAT DAN WAS DOING. AND DAN WOULD BE WATCHING TO SEE WHAT PETER AND TOM WERE DOING. BUT WE ABIDED BY CERTAIN GUIDELINES. IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE THE STORY, IF-- IF YOU STILL NEEDED ANOTHER CONFIRMATION, IT MIGHT BE TOUGH TO DO IT, BUT YOU'D HOLD BACK. THE PRESSURE NOT TO HOLD BACK, IS A THOUSAND TIMES GREATER TODAY THAN IT WAS IN YOUR TIME OR MINE. BECAUSE THERE'S A BLOGGER OUT THERE WHO'S GOT SOMETHING OUT. YOU'VE GOT THE WEBSITE OF THIS NEWSPAPER OR THAT NEWSPAPER, WHICH IS PUTTING INFORMATION OUT ALMOST BEFORE IT HAS BEEN PROCESSED. PART OF THE CHANGE THAT WE'RE ALL TRYING TO DEAL WITH AS JOURNALISTS AND THE-- THE CONSUMING PUBLIC TRYING TO DEAL WITH, GOOD POINT ABOUT DEADLINES. THAT NOW IF YOU'RE-- IN AN 24 HOUR CABLE NEWS OR SATELLITE NEWS, YOU LITERALLY HAVE A DEADLINE EVERY NANOSECOND. BECAUSE IT'S CONSTANT. AND, AS YOU SAY, SOMEBODY COMES IN AND SAYS, "LISTEN-- WE GOT THIS OFF THE INTERNET." THEY DON'T SAY THAT IT'S A BLOGGER SITTING IN HIS PAJAMAS IN HIS BASEMENT OR SAY, "IT COMES FROM A NUCLEAR SCIENTIST." IT'S JUST, "THIS HAS BEEN ON THE INTERNET." AND I'VE BEEN IN THESE SITUATIONS. I'D BE SURPRISED IF YOU HAVEN'T, TED. BUT SINCE IT'S WHAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT, THAT'S NEWS." I WANT TO REACH INTO THE AREA OF WHAT'S HAPPENED TO THE GRIT IN THE GUT OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM?

Posted by: Tim at August 26, 2007 10:40 AM | Permalink

Tim,

Yes, *some* members of "the audience" can tell the difference on their own but nobody can really sift through the available info as a "member of the audience" and the problem of having the audience (collectively) serve as a good filter is not exactly solved...

Until it is, the bloggers (or independent journalists or whatever we want to call them) cannot really replace "traditional journalism".

This is a pretty strong argument for the "traditional journalists" -- bloggers may be able to provide pieces of journalism (even of very
good quality) but not a structured view of what's going on around us, which is also needed...

Delia

P.S. I mean it doesn't seem like it to me: Digg, for instance, is more entertaining than informative (at least, that's how it looks to me); NewsTrust looks like a good idea but doesn't seem to have enough traction (at least not yet) to get enough people involved and became truly important...

P.P.S. also, I doubt that for profits that don't pay contributors are going to survive long term (and paying the huge number of people needed may not be an option either) -- once non-profit equivalents show up (sites that would use ad revenue, for instance, to fuel improvements and give much more choice to the community), people would probably leave the for profits... D.

Posted by: Delia at August 26, 2007 12:27 PM | Permalink

Delia,

I'm not sure what part of my comment you're responding to. So, I'll offer some point of agreement and disagreement.

re: bloggers replacing "traditional journalism".

I consider the whole "replacing" concept a red herring. I reject the zero-sum basis of it. It is a cry-wolf scenario that has been disproven repeatedly with each technological advance in media platform.

I do think there will always be a demand to pay people to spend their days producing acts of "traditional journalism" - whatever that means to you - and producing it on a media platform (or better yet across many media platforms). I don't think the people who are currently paid always succeed and recognize some are better than others. I think "traditional journalism" as practiced by those paid by newspapers has been in a decades long decline - to the point that Newspapers Aren't Worth Buying.

More than a year ago, Andy Cline, Jeremy Iggers and Doug McGill began trying to answer the question: Who is a Journalist?

Boiled way down, here's what we decided: Commercial news organizations do not get to decide who counts as a journalist; audiences get to decide who counts. So would-be journalists must create legitimacy among the publics they would serve. And we suggest three ways that may be done outside of a traditional newsroom: 1) be loyal to the audience first, 2) make the invisible visible (i.e. cover those people and topics the so-called mainstream media ignore), and 3) operate with a discipline of verification and as a custodian of facts. Do these things and you may properly call yourself a journalist.

The professional product is important. And it is threatened right now. But that threat comes from many quarters, including from the professional newsroom itself. Rather than disparage citizen journalism, why not help it along? Why not use it to enhance the professional product? For some excellent ideas, I highly recommend reading Tim Porter's essay If Newspapers Are to Rise Again.

Posted by: Tim at August 26, 2007 7:08 PM | Permalink

Tim, I just countered your top argument (that having trouble identifying quality work was not an issue -- I think it *is* and I told you why) and added some related concerns... D.

Posted by: Delia at August 26, 2007 8:26 PM | Permalink

re Cline's
> Rather than disparage citizen journalism, why not help it along? Why not use it to enhance the professional product?

Why not? it depends on your real goal; there may be good reasons not to.

Maybe your goal is a lizard-brain one - to protect your position by putting down the upstarts. If so, it makes sense to emphasize the overall low status of the upstarts and to try to keep them there.

Or maybe your goal is a public-service one.

One public service goal would be to ensure that readers are as well informed as possible - in which case it makes sense (if it doesn't take too much investment) to lend the cit-js a hand ("cit-j education"), and welcome their appearance.

Another public service goal would be to to help clue readers in as to what quality looks like, to educate the epistemologically challenged. In this case it makes sense to explain what is and is not good reporting. (And I think such education is needed; empirically, it's clear that a lot of people are epistemologically challenged, and we as a society would be much better off if they weren't.)

Superficially, this ("reader education") is what Skube et al. (e.g. locally here) are trying to do.
But I don't think "reader education" is the real motivation, for 2 reasons -

1. If you educate your readers well, it'll have lizard-brain blowback: if you epistemologically sharpen your readers, they will rely on the better blogs for (much of) their information.

2. If you educate your readers well, the terms "Fox News", "payola pundit", and "talk radio" will come up frequently. But they don't; we hear about "bloggers" instead.

Personal perspective - back when I was a grad student, when I heard others speak respectfully of the knowledge&wisdom that amateurs in my field had accumulated over decades, I found it extremely threatening - I felt their expertise effectively devalued what (comparatively little) I knew.

I'd be surprised if this wasn't the motivation for journos' dissing bloggers.

Posted by: Anna Haynes at August 26, 2007 9:47 PM | Permalink

Really interesting post: Skube Versus Rosen in a blog called New Media Theory. (I left a comment.)

Is there any further theoretical help available to give a deeper perspective on what is going on here? I think there is. First, I would mention Riepl’s law (from 1913) which according to Wikipedia states:

that new, further developed types of media never replace the existing modes of media and their usage patterns. Instead, a convergence takes place in their field, leading to a different way and field of use for these older forms.

Mathais Dopfner, CEO of the German Axel Springer publishing group gives a contemporary summary of Riepl’s Law which I discussed in detail in this post.

Media progress is cumulative, not substitutive. New media are constantly added, but the old ones remain. This law has yet to be disproved. Books have not replaced storytelling. Newspapers have not replaced books; radio has not replaced newspapers; and television has not replaced radio....

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 27, 2007 10:42 AM | Permalink

but they are just remnants of what they used to be... no? (oral story telling, books, radio etc) and some things have all but disappeared (e.g. is Vaudeville dead in America? pretty much... but you could point to little acts like the Prairie Home Companion and say... hey, if they can survive, why couldn't others? well, they just couldn't -- the tide turned...); and if you make your livelihood doing that it seems to matter little that in the grand scheme of things it will probably not disappear entirely...

Delia

Posted by: Delia at August 27, 2007 11:56 AM | Permalink

Do blogs drive traffic? Check this out.

Top 10 opinion items of last week at LATimes.com, as measured by visits to the website, between Aug. 17-23:

1) Death by numbers, by Meghan Daum.
2) Not so fast, Christian soldiers, by Michael L. Weinstein and Reza Aslan.
3) The journalism that bloggers actually do, by Jay Rosen.
4) The misleading Vietnam analogy; Editorial.
5) Stonehenges all around us, by Craig Childs (from Feb. 16, 2007).
6) Blogs: All the noise that fits, by Michael Skube.
7) Debates that say something, by Newt Gingrich.
8) 'Sanctuary' as battleground, by Ronald Brownstein.
9) Drunk on ethanol; Editorial.
10) The lost Padilla verdict, by Stephen Vladeck.

Not bad!

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 27, 2007 1:50 PM | Permalink

Here in Holland we have the same discussion now, for a journalist we now have qualifications and a matching description. The quality is under review by a "board".

Posted by: Sonja Bakker fan at August 27, 2007 3:31 PM | Permalink

Jay,
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan apparently recycles Riepl's Law in cybernetic parlance. In that work McLuhan argues that old media are folded into a newer ecology of media whose boundaries are redrawn and whose processes are reorganized by the newer media. For example, he argues, the phonograph is effectively incorporated into the sound film to different effect. Print remains in the post-radio and TV media landscape, but it's purpose of informing the public of breaking news is entirely usurped by the faster electronic media. Print nevertheless remains, but its role in the larger media ecology is fundamentally altered. This point is entirely separable from his more controversial claim that shifts in media regimes actually alter the categorial boundaries of human sensibility.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at August 28, 2007 1:31 AM | Permalink

All true. I did my MA thesis on McLuhan in 1981-2.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 28, 2007 2:05 AM | Permalink

So what are we talking about here? People like Skube, threatened with near extinction, not going softly into that good night? No, it is not a zero-sum game, but it seems pretty clear to a lot of people that the newspaper as we know it will cease to exist. I have no idea what the new form will be, but constantly haranguing newspaper journalists to go back to what they used to do--or teling readers they're the only ones who can do whatever it is they used to do--ignores the realities of the marketplace that have changed reporting perhaps forever and the habits of a new generation of information seekers.

I say let the curmudgeons have their way for a while. I feel for them.

Posted by: Ferdy at August 28, 2007 10:04 AM | Permalink

OT - Jay - walked past NYU journo bldg and there's a small tattered sign up about a move over to the Cooper Gulag - have you been transported from the Square?

Posted by: fatbear at August 28, 2007 10:29 AM | Permalink

Yeah.... 20 Cooper Square now.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 28, 2007 3:30 PM | Permalink

So is that your last word, Jay?

it's not about journalist vs. bloggers -- it's really about the journalists' fear that the public is not going to be able to tell quality on its own?

Delia

re:"These columns appear to be about bloggers vs. journalists. But the bloggers aren't really the subject at hand; they're foils and symbols. In reality it's traditional journalists writing about what they fear: a public that cannot discriminate once the gates are down."

Posted by: Delia at August 28, 2007 6:33 PM | Permalink

Bloggers Take on Talk Radio Hosts

...But the hosts were uniformly defiant against the bloggers, who were called “crackpots with keyboards” and accused of using “guerrilla tactics.”...

Mr. Stark: “You’ve spoken of the number of apologies you have tried to make. How many apologies does a professional get before they realize they are an incompetent and move on to another line of work?”

KSFO’s Lee Rodgers: “Well I haven’t apologized for anything and I am not going to start with you. How the hell do you like that, creep?”

Posted by: Tim at August 28, 2007 7:44 PM | Permalink

Jay, Not to be picky--but to be accurate, which was the point of my earlier comment--you said firedoglake provided the 'only blow-by-blow' account of the Libby trial, and not that the coverage there was 'better.' Was FDL 'better' than Media Blogger Association coverage? Arguably, I suppose. But was it the 'only' blow-by-blow account? No way. As I mentioned, I liveblogged the first week of the trial...

Posted by: Rory O'Connor at August 28, 2007 9:18 PM | Permalink

Okay, well to be really accurate-since no one is being picky--testimony began on January 29, 2007. The defense and prosecution finished their presentations on Feb. 20. A blow-by-blow account of the trial would, at a minimum, be a blow-by-blow account of what was said in court between those two dates, and I believe Firedoglake was the only news organization to provide that.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 28, 2007 9:42 PM | Permalink

Dear Jay,
Based on your reading of McLuhan in your MA, are there any insights of McLuhan that you feel still fundamentally inform your take on the emerging role of blogs in the media today?

I discuss my take on McLuhan in the media at the following link:
There's a McLuhan in My Media Soup!

Posted by: Mark Anderson at August 28, 2007 10:40 PM | Permalink

Jay, if you are still collecting examples.

1) Nick Matzke, blogger on Panda's Thumb, discovered that the Creationist textbook "Of Pandas and People" has a typo that demonstrated that the only difference between it and an older text was replacement of the word "creation" with "intelligent design", which was one of the key pieces of evidence in the Dover trial. Several of the PT bloggers were involved in the trial itself and blogged it blow-by-blow:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/compliments_to.html

2) Blogger PZ Myers of Pharyngula got sued by Stuart Pivar for defamation (actually a very good negative review of Pivar's horrible book). The noise created by the blogs, including some blogging lawyers, forced Pivar to withdraw the lawsuit:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/the_inevitable_has_occurred.php

3) A group of science publishers hired a PR agent to lie about Open Access publishing and to protect their copyrights. They formed, last week, an organization called PRISM. Bloggers raised hell and a couple of them discovered that the group used copyrighted images without permission on their website:
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/08/this_prism_does_not_turn_white.php

Posted by: coturnix at August 28, 2007 11:09 PM | Permalink

re: Kamm's "Echo Chamber" hit in the After Matter. That reminds me (and apologies to Kent Bye for not remembering sooner for the Blowback article): The Echo Chamber Project

The Echo Chamber Project explores collaborative investigative filmmaking by using new media technologies as well as a repository of original video interviews with journalists and scholars. It is a project that details the limitations of American journalism while at the same time embodying innovative solutions through collaborative media production. In short, it is an independent filmmaker's "YouTube" combined with "Wikipedia" for serious journalism.

Posted by: Tim at August 28, 2007 11:14 PM | Permalink

So is that your last word, Jay? It's not about journalist vs. bloggers -- it's really about the journalists' fear that the public is not going to be able to tell quality on its own?

I don't know what you mean by last word. Seems to me the comments have continued.

Late additions to After Matter:

BBC Radio's 5 Live has a show called Pods and Blogs, "our attempt to report the news members of the public are creating, discussing and sharing across the world thanks to the internet." Host Chris Vallance did an interview with me on the Blowback piece, Talking Points Memo coverage of the US Attorneys scandal, and the expanded press with its amateur and pro wings. Listen here.

Interested in curmudgeon lit and its case against The Blog? See A parody of democracy. "Error-strewn, insular and parasitic, political blogs tend not to enhance but poison healthy debate." (Oliver Kamm in The Guardian in April '07.) Some classic hits, including Echo Chamber, No Factuality, You Go to Extremes, Too Much Time on Your Hands, Editors Rock, Parasite Blues, and You'd be Lost Without Our News.

Joe Gandelman isolates a key factor:

Most journalists who worked at any time in their lives for mainstream media outlets had to jump through all kinds of academic, pay-your-dues-at-smaller-market and brutal office politics hoops to get where they are. Where are they? The Powers That Be have given them assignments to write and market their work. But bloggers are these people who didn’t have to jump through the hoops. They just took it — and write and publish online for all to see, without having to jump through hoops for anyone (unless they write post specially aimed at getting a link from a big left or right blog). They online, write and publish for all to see. Who gave them the right to do this the “easy” way?

Here's Skube in his 2005 op-ed for the News & Record, showing how on-the-money Gandelman is:

With another semester drawing to a close, I find myself doing something in my journalism class that gives me considerable unease. We're discussing that often truculent tribe that calls itself bloggers. What's more, we're discussing them as though they were actually journalists - as though they had come up through the ranks like the rest of us, paying dues by covering the police beat or the local sewerage commission before landing any plum assignments.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 29, 2007 12:06 AM | Permalink

re:" I don't know what you mean by last word. Seems to me the comments have continued."

yeah, the comments *have* continued... and a number of them (Anna's, Ferdy's, mine...) argued against what you said; yet you haven't responded to them -- that gives the impression that your prior statement on the issue remains your "last word"... am I reading this right?

Delia

Posted by: Delia at August 29, 2007 9:41 AM | Permalink

Thanks for noticing, Delia, though I wouldn't say I'm exactly against what Jay says. I just don't think that a blow against every misguided shot print journalists make is worth the time or advances the discussion. I would respond positively to Skube's bitter remark that there is some value to paying one's dues, if only in learning from experienced professionals instead of making a lot of stupid mistakes that cost everyone some credibility. Just because they can blog, doesn't mean they have anything to say.

Posted by: Ferdy at August 29, 2007 9:53 AM | Permalink

> I just don't think that a blow against every misguided shot print journalists make is worth the time or advances the discussion.

absolutely. Thanks Ferdy.

It's just that when they wave that red cape, it's soooo hard to ignore it...

(at least it is for me)

Posted by: Anna at August 29, 2007 2:30 PM | Permalink

"I just don't think that a blow against every misguided shot print journalists make is worth the time or advances the discussion."

Neither do I, Ferdy. Who does? As far as I can tell, no one.

Recognizing that just firing back at Skube would accomplish little, I tried to make my reply informational by pulling together that list of blog reporting projects. In my view that does advance the discussion.

Ferdy: "I say let the curmudgeons have their way for a while. I feel for them." I'm not planning on engaging any more "bloggers, you suck" columns, but I don't think we should go easy on the curmudgeons, and I don't feel for them at all. They are anti-learning. That does no one any good.

Anyway, here's a Beth Lawton post it. She thinks we need to have these bloggers vs. journalists, print vs. web discussions.

a number of them (Anna's, Ferdy's, mine...) argued against what you said...

Actually, they didn't. You did, Delia. Because that is what you do.

I think Anna had this part right: "Back when I was a grad student, when I heard others speak respectfully of the knowledge & wisdom that amateurs in my field had accumulated over decades, I found it extremely threatening - I felt their expertise effectively devalued what (comparatively little) I knew. I'd be surprised if this wasn't the motivation for journos' dissing bloggers."

I have seen this myself in (some) NYU students reaction to Assignment Zero. I emphasize "some."

It's not that there isn't value for young journalists in paying your dues; there is. Anna's point was that the perception that some people aren't paying the same dues might explain curmudgeonly reactions-- and the young curmudgeons sometimes found in J-school. So if we are trying to understand those reactions this is one place to start.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 29, 2007 3:32 PM | Permalink

Okay, this is just amusing.

If you go to the Skube article now there is a huge note inserted after the first graph:

FOR THE RECORD: Bloggers: An article in the Aug. 19 Opinion section on bloggers as journalists stated that the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The newspaper has not won a Pulitzer for the story. —

And... Skube used a quote from Samuel Johnson. "No man but a blockhead," the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said, "ever wrote but for money."

Here's a comment I found at a blog:

Oh, lord, not that Johnson quote again. If the journalist had actually read the quote in context--or had spent ten minutes with Google to appear as if he had--he'd see that Boswell calls it a "strange opinion" arising from Johnson's "indolent disposition." Boswell immediately follows the quote with a contrary thought: "Numerous instances to refute this will occur to all who are versed in the history of literature."

But hey, what do I know about checking the context of quotes? I'm just a blogger.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 29, 2007 3:41 PM | Permalink

> In my view [pulling together that list of blog reporting projects] does advance the discussion.

agreed on that.

Posted by: Anna at August 29, 2007 5:47 PM | Permalink

Please don't misunderstand. I think the stir created by the Skube interchange was both high profile and useful. If Skube is getting sloppy and discouraged, though, I can't really say as I blame him. These have been rough times for print journalists, assaulted on one side by amateur journalists who aren't playing by the rules he had to (and those rules are pretty inflexible, which is why people like me blog - nobody would EVER give me a film review column in a newspaper) and their own management teams on the other. Yes, I feel for him. I'd say, "The hell with it," too. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if his editor suggested he attack blogs, though I'm perfectly willing to accept that he thought that up on his own. It's in management's best interests to attack bloggers, after all, more than the lowly columnist's.

Posted by: Ferdy at August 29, 2007 6:01 PM | Permalink

Ferdy,

Ah yes, professionalism by bromide:

Lindsay is correct that in both the J-school and newsroom worlds, reasoning-by-bromide is normal behavior. Question for the Deans: why is this? "If your mother says she loves you, check it out" is treated not as folk wisdom, a clever crack, but as heavenly wisdom, a thundercrack.

Meanwhile, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" is handed down not as a slogan too clever by half, but as a public service philosophy. Find 100 journalists who know the slogan, perhaps five can tell you the origin. And they don’t know that the author (Finley Peter Dunne) was being sarcastic, either. Is this education?

Lindsay includes on his list "pay your dues," endlessly taught to the recruits. It means accepting the career ladder as is. (A good way to kill ambition in the ranks.) One he left out is "good old-fashioned shoe leather reporting," which is probably the number one commandment a believer learns to accept. (And I have, I have.) There is almost no problem in journalism that doesn’t come down to the neglect of GOFSLR. According to the priesthood, there are no goods in journalism that don’t flow from it. Where are The Skeptics for that?

... and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Poor Skubey, indeed. Don't hold your breath for the day Skubey starts making excuses for everyone else caught between their "amateur" critics and their management.

Posted by: Tim at August 29, 2007 8:08 PM | Permalink

The life of Samuel Johnson (starting at the bottom of p. 291):

When I expressed an earnest wish for his remarks on Italy, he said, "I do no see that I could make a book upon Italy; yet I should be glad to get £200 or £500 by such a work." This showed both that a journal of his Tour upon the Continent was not wholly out of his contemplation, and that he uniformly adhered to that strange opinion which his indolent disposition made him utter: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Numerous instances to refute this will ocur to all who are versed in the history of literature.

Posted by: Tim at August 29, 2007 8:49 PM | Permalink

Tim, quoting at me isn't humane, it's just clever. There are people who actually believe some of these "slogans" and others as well, like the Golden Rule. Have a little compassion and stop being so impressed with yourself.

Posted by: Ferdy at August 29, 2007 10:01 PM | Permalink

I apologize, Ferdy. I didn't realize quoting Jay Rosen was inhumane (but clever!).

I'll try to remember that "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" is equal to the Golden Rule.

Posted by: Tim at August 29, 2007 10:25 PM | Permalink

re:"a number of them (Anna's, Ferdy's, mine...) argued against what you said...' Actually, they didn't. You did, Delia. Because that is what you do."

You *know* that's not true, Jay... I couldn't agree more with your long term non-profit approach to NewAssignment and I tell anybody that would listen...

but when your arguments don't make sense to me... I'm NOT going to praise you! I'm going to tell you what I see wrong with them -- otherwise what's the point of reading and commenting on your blog?

Delia

P.S. and I thought both Anna and Ferdy disagreed to some disagreed... I did *more*, true! so maybe I should have given my name first but I figured it's always nicer to leave oneself at the end. D.

Posted by: Delia at August 29, 2007 10:33 PM | Permalink

Ferdy: "I think the stir created by the Skube interchange was both high profile and useful."

I think the importance is the stir; Skube wrote his LA Times opinion column at a time when blowback would not/could not be muffled and filtered.

So, one more quote:

I contend that journalism is the most important discoursive practice in our culture. As such, it reflects and drives the noetic field. And this means that it has a profound, even establishing, effect on the dominant rhetoric. Journalism tells us who the knower is, what he can know, how he can know it, his relationship to an audience, and the nature of language as a medium of thought and expression. When I say that journalism is an under-theorized practice (as I have many times), one of the things I mean to suggest is that most journalists practice their profession without understanding their role in the noetic field.

Posted by: Tim at August 29, 2007 10:52 PM | Permalink

What's inhumane about giving someone a link and a quote?

When you say to someone across the forum: on yeah? well, check this out. Here's a link for more, if the quoted part grabs you....that is a response. It's not a direct response, true. Talking at, not talking with? Maybe. But even that can be valuable.

I see a "try this" link as a gesture in conversation. A data point, nothing more. And fairly humane as methods go.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 29, 2007 11:20 PM | Permalink

Well, how about these?

"Poor Skubey, indeed. Don't hold your breath for the day Skubey starts making excuses for everyone else caught between their "amateur" critics and their management."

"Guess Skube (the projo j-prof) aint versed."

Is it really necessary to throw these kinds of barbs? I'm not too fond of name-calling, however mild.

As for your quote, Jay, I'm not certain I think that journalism is any more important to the cultural discourse than other forms of expression, such as film, television, slang, song lyrics, etc. I find that journalism tends to cherrypick from genuine cultural creations and mold them into a kind of cultural norm that people can use for shorthand and to feel they are current (whether they are or not). Journalism when applied to politics these days tends to be a parrot, not a molder or synthesizer, passing phrases from the power brokers to the public (WMD, stay the course, etc.) to maintain the status quo. As such, I don't think most journalism tells us much about the knower (which I assume is the journalist in the context of this quote), but rather the cultural agenda of the institution he or she represents. I think this is even more true given the rise of punditry.

Posted by: Ferdy at August 30, 2007 9:21 AM | Permalink

I don't see any name calling. And the quote is not mine; Andrew Cline said it.

Scott Rosenberg in The Guardian: The blog haters have barely any idea what they are raging against.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 30, 2007 10:20 AM | Permalink

Whatever. I see a snarky tone, but that's just me...

Posted by: Ferdy at August 30, 2007 10:49 AM | Permalink

Note: the previous comment was actually Ferdy channeling me.

Jay, where do you want us to put additional reporting-on-blog cases? Can you maybe put up a thread exclusively for that? (I know a previous thread was to be exclusively for that, but it digressed...)
Or just give us a URL where you want them to go. (maybe someplace on Journawiki?)

Posted by: Anna at August 30, 2007 12:04 PM | Permalink

Anna: for now you can put them here. I will have someone comb this thread and the others for any examples.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 30, 2007 12:25 PM | Permalink

Jay, getting back to what you were saying... (I just had to get the other thing off my chest first... sorry)

re: "I think Anna had this part right: "Back when I was a grad student, when I heard others speak respectfully of the knowledge & wisdom that amateurs in my field had accumulated over decades, I found it extremely threatening - I felt their expertise effectively devalued what (comparatively little) I knew. I'd be surprised if this wasn't the motivation for journos' dissing bloggers."

yes and doesn't that lead back to the journalists vs. bloggers being the real issue? -- the idea that it's really about reactions to feeling threatened? (and not about the journalists' fear -- to some extent justifiable, I would say -- that the public could not tell quality on its own)

Delia

P.S. as an aside, I'm wondering if you think Skube wasn't entirely wrong when he said it just takes a whole lot of time keeping up with blogs and plenty of people just don't have that kind of time for this... (I'm NOT defending *him* -- he should have put in the time if he was going to write an article about it but... as a *general idea*, seems true...) D.

Posted by: Delia at August 30, 2007 11:34 PM | Permalink

Delia,

re: threatened vs. fear

I don't think that they're mutually exclusive ... journalists may feel threated by bloggers ("replacing them") and fear that the American public won't be able to distinguish quality information on their own (which makes the whole replacing thing scarier).

Those feelings may exist and for those that have them, are real enough. That doesn't mean either are justified. Nor does it mean that the best way for projos to express those feelings/concerns is a sweeping attack on bloggers out of ignorance.

When a projo (and j-prof in this case) does attack, pointing out their ignorance and sloppiness (without being overly snarky) about bloggers seems reasonable. And no, I don't think every projo shot at bloggers requires a retort.

re: time and *general ideas*

I'm skeptical of the time complaint. It's amazing how many people don't have time to read, but have plenty of time to watch TV and play video games.

I also think the *general idea* that people won't be able to distinguish quality information on their own is weak. I could be wrong. Many people believe the earth's seasons are caused by its elliptical orbit. Oh, well.

Posted by: Tim at August 31, 2007 9:39 AM | Permalink

Tim, here's the starting point for this:

Jay:"These columns appear to be about bloggers vs. journalists. *But the bloggers aren't really the subject at hand; they're foils and symbols*. In reality it's traditional journalists writing about what they fear: a public that cannot discriminate once the gates are down." (my emphasis)

could *both* of them be going on? sure... but that's not what Jay was saying...

Delia

P.S. as to the time needed to keep up with blogs...they are just very unstructured and there is nothing that I'm aware of that could give someone a quick overview of what *important* is going on... (the equivalent of reading a reputable newspaper or a couple of them -- most people can find time for that or at least for watching the evening news or listening to a good radio program); so I think it's naive to expect most people to just find the time somehow... if traditional media is going South, looks like the public will end-up being *less* informed, although richer information may be out there none the less -- that's why I think this is a serious issue... D.

Posted by: Delia at August 31, 2007 10:35 AM | Permalink

The image of an unstructured blog world where no one has realized that it's hard to find the good stuff is absurd.

Ever heard of Memeorandum? Its a "structure" that tells us what news stories and posts the political blog world is buzzing about. Same guy produced Techmeme about the tech world. Ever heard of Digg? Reddit? Users votes help push things to the top so you can find the good stuff. Ever seen the device, links for 2007-08-30? Simple and widely adopted blogger convention that helps you find the good stuff-- and save time.

And for the big picture view of this see this WSJ debate between Andrew Keen and David Weinberger, who says:

We also agree that the Web is a problem. The problem endemic to the Web even before anyone gave the Web version numbers -- and the problem that leads to your issue with "cockroaches" -- is that because anyone can contribute and because there are no centralized gatekeepers, there's too much stuff and too many voices, most of which any one person has no interest in. But, the Web is also the continuing struggle to deal with that problem. From the most basic tools of the early Internet, starting with UseNet discussion threads, through Wikipedia, and sites that enable users to tag online resources, the Web invents ways to pull together ideas and information, finding the connections and relationships that keep the "miscellaneous" from staying that way.

"The Web is also the continuing struggle to deal with that problem." Kube doesn't know this because he didn't bother to investigate. Keen does know this, and decided to ignore it so he could write a best seller and become a celebrity cra-mudge.

About Kube's complaints, "who has time to read blogs?" There I read as him saying "this isn't something I have to investigate, right? I can ignore this, right? This is a fad, this hype, this is junk, not journalism... right? I'm safe if I don't pay attention... right?" Since that was the point of his 05 column he was baffled when Ed Cone asked him what blogs he read. ("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.")

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 31, 2007 11:23 AM | Permalink

Jay,

As far as I'm concerned those are not really structuring the info in *blogs* -- which is what we seem to be talking about: "The image of an unstructured blog world where no one has realized that it's hard to find the good stuff is absurd."

I mean, take a look at the sources for the top items in Memeorandum: CNN,Washington Post, Yahoo News, New York Times... As for Digg -- you are kidding, right? it's usually entertaining but *informative*? only occasionally...

re: "From the most basic tools of the early Internet, starting with UseNet discussion threads, through Wikipedia, and sites that enable users to tag online resources, the Web invents ways to pull together ideas and information, finding the connections and relationships that keep the "miscellaneous" from staying that way."

well... it seems to be far from solving the problem -- is there *hope*? certainly... but we don't know that it will *ever* solve it! (this is the scary part: a structure that was doing the job for the most part is crumbling and we only have the *hope* of a replacement structure?... am I the ONLY one who sees something wrong with that?)

Delia

P.S. yeah, Skube didn't *mean* that the right way... (I still find the general idea at least worth considering) D.

Posted by: Delia at August 31, 2007 11:49 AM | Permalink

Whatever.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at August 31, 2007 11:59 AM | Permalink

whatever...*what"? (what am I supposed to understand from that? you believe Memeorandum is really structuring info from *blogs*... or that Digg is in fact very informative... or you just don't care about this whole topic of what's going to happen: *something*'s bound to turn out...don't worry, be happy...) D.

Posted by: Delia at August 31, 2007 12:14 PM | Permalink

Delia: ... am I the ONLY one who sees something wrong with that?

Yup.

Posted by: Tim at August 31, 2007 7:24 PM | Permalink

Tim: we are in BIG trouble then...

Posted by: Delia at August 31, 2007 7:42 PM | Permalink

Saving the Newspaper Industry

Posted by: Tim at August 31, 2007 7:53 PM | Permalink

August 2007. DeSmogBlog announces Operation Uncover DSCOVR, a look into NASA's bewildering decision to mothball the Deep Space Climate Observatory and refusal to release internal documents which could explain why.

(They're asking their readers to help fund it.)

Posted by: Anna at September 1, 2007 6:01 PM | Permalink

September 2006. Colorado Confidential investigates financial shenanigans of an influential Colorado 527.
(A series; search Colorado Confidential's site for Trailhead, for the links. SusanG promoted the first report; she (or another Kossack) termed it "blogroots investigative journalism at its finest"; and one of the C.C. writers says of 527 investigations, "Dip your toes in folks, it's fun and easy.")

Highlights from Colorado Confidential's first year (posted July 2007).

Posted by: Anna at September 1, 2007 9:14 PM | Permalink

November 2004 - June 2005. Sound Politics "uncovered the errors in King County's absentee voter report through a state Public Disclosure Act request. [Stefan Sharkansky] has filed additional requests for the audit trail created by King County election officials to handle all the ballots." [link]

Posted by: Tim at September 2, 2007 11:37 AM | Permalink

Jay,
In today's post, Glen Greenwald signs on to your "savviness" account of Rove's spell on the beltway zeitgeist, but implicitly poses a follow-up question: Why is it that catastrophic failure doesn't seem to have consequences for the reality-defining and "still reverent after all these years" beltway Rove cult?

Where is the "savviness" in continuing to worship the genius of failure as Gloria Borger does (to use Greenwald's example)?

It seems that the journalistic standard of "savviness" is as psychotically detached from policy and political success as Bush's foreign "policy." As long as Rovean spin defines reality and savviness, damn the results, Rove is a genius--in fact Rove is myself and what I stand for as a journalist. This journalistic worship of the agent of disinformation verges on borderline personality disorder--the boundaries of the political operative's self and the journalist's own self have almost wholly dissolved. The journalist avowedly identifies with and aspires to the moral integrity and clarity of a professional liar and hatchet man.

The savviness theory seems to lack an account of the dogmatic and self-fullfilling un-savviness of how often what passes for savviness is worship of failure perceived as power, the syncophantic journalists' embarassingly un-savvy faith in their object of worship--their faith in Rove in spite of, rather than because of, his actual effect on the world.

Posted by: Mark Anderson at September 2, 2007 2:57 PM | Permalink

I said that savviness was the religion of the press, Mark. I didn't say it was a savvy religion. There definitely is some self-deception involved, and those who can keep the self-deception going gain an advantage with the press.

I am trying to write a short reply post to Greenwald.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 3, 2007 10:35 AM | Permalink

New post: When We Try to Explain the Rout of the Press under George W. Bush, a response of sorts to Glenn Greenwald.

This thread closed; thanks to all participants.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at September 4, 2007 9:18 AM | Permalink