Journos in blog clothing

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  • by Frank Paynter on May 23, 2024

    Journalists have a serious fixation on the competition from the blogs. A free-lancer I know is working up a story and I offered to turn him on to a few bloggers who have developed some sources, some expertise, some cachet in the subject matter he’s working. He thought about it and said, “No. I don’t want the bloggers to scoop me.”

    Okay. He’s a young man and hasn’t learned that he’s already been scooped, that there’s nothing new under the sun, even in the age of gene splicing and instant global communication for the masses.

    Less personal, more mainstream, is the reaction of the purveyors of dead trees to Jason Leopold’s story about the Rove indictment. When the indictment wasn’t forthcoming, Leopold and his publisher, truthout, were categorized as unethical bloggers with nothing to lose by publishing hearsay and speculation by writers in both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Leopold has a checkered past that he doesn’t hide, so the swiftboating efforts of the White House in this matter won’t harm him personally, but the journalists who are taken in by the easy slam, those who make Leopold the story instead of digging deeper into the matters surrounding Rove and Cheney are doing us all a disservice and wasting some fine pulpwood. The Rovesters have a special gene perhaps that peculiarly enables them to play Wimpy in a perpetual match of “let’s you and him fight.”

    Michael Roberts offers a current take on the importance of the blogger/journalist distinction to the journos in the current online issue of Westword. Roberts, himself a paid professional, knocks a fellow from the Denver Post who appears to be commenting anonymously in threads following posts in a local political blog. Roberts uses that as a springboard to examine the ethics of anonymity and the exposure that salary-men in the writing profession suffer when they get down in the gutter with blogs.

    Roberts misses a bet by not researching deeply enough to dig up real pros who crossover nicely, people like Ed Cone and Jay Rosen.