[Dean's World] Aziz P: the punditocracy

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
the punditocracy
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1187616417.shtml


   The strane contradiction of the mass media is that it combines true
   journalism - the nuts and bolts, reporters on the street, old school
   journalism trade - with talking heads up their own asses who write
   "opinion". Frankly the blogsphere obsoletes the latter. I am not one
   of those blog triumphalists who think the blogsphere can replace the
   former, but there certainly are good examples of blogs who make the
   attempt; on teh right, Patterico comes to mind, whereas on the left,
   Josh Marshall's TPM. Both are examples of blogs that do honest and
   genuine reporting.

   Which is why the punditocracy is so threatened. Michael Skube of the
   LA Times today tries to [1]argue that the blogsphere is a ranting mob
   as usual. But note anything odd in his examples?

     The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with
     disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of
     enemies real and imagined.

     And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side. "No man
     but a blockhead," the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said,
     "ever wrote but for money." Yet here are people, whole brigades of
     them, happy to write for free. And not just write. Many of the most
     active bloggers â Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah
     Marshall and the contributors to the Huffington Post â are
     insistent partisans in political debate.

   Kevin Drum notes of the above,

     of these four examples, the first three are all professional
     writers and the fourth is a venture-funded site with a paid staff.
     If you're going to extol "thorough fact-checking and verification"
     over the blogosphere's "potpourri of opinion," you really ought to
     fact-check your assertions first.

   And what's more, Josh Marshall [2]emailed Skube directly about being
   lumped in. Guess what?

     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..."

   So Skube writes an opinion piece in the LA Times about how bloggers
   are just a pack of partisan hounds who do no real journalism, and roam
   free unfettered by the bounds of editorial control. The same editorial
   review which inserted blogs Skube admits to never having read for
   "more examples" to support his thesis? The ironies abound.

References

   1. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-skube19aug19,0,3547019.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
   2. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/024644.php