Just some things that bug me

About the way the MSM covers bloggers in the wake of Eason and Rather

1. They discuss bloggers as an undifferentiated mass. Sullivan, Wonkette, LGF, Powerline, Kos, or Hugh Hewitt-they are treated as interchangeable. They all blog and, therefore, no distinctions need to be made. More importantly, a Hewitt is expected to defend the behavior of all blogs, not just his own.

No one, however, demands that Bill Keller defend the practices of the National Enquirer even though both use paid reporters to produce a newspaper.

Nor does anyone equate Gwen Ifill with Jerry Springer just because they both interview people on TV.

2. They never give credit to blogs for the depth they sometimes bring to a story or issue. For example, this week on the News Hour they devoted a segment to blogs and Jordan Eason. I did a word count on the transcript for that segment and it was just less than 2,000. Den Beste or Beldar write 2,000 words when they are just warming up to their main argument. When the best bloggers really sink their teeth into a subject, they go deeper and at greater length than any television news show ever can or most print outlets usually do. (See Just One Minute on Plame/Wilson,Beldar on Brinkley's Kerry book, Powerline on "60 Minutes" or Captain's Quarters on Eason Jordan.)

Are these typical of all blogs? No, of course not. But the New Yorker isn't the norm for print journalism and Nightline isn't typical of television news.

One key difference between blogs and traditional journalism favors blogs. Blog traffic tends to flow to the most in-depth or wide-ranging treatment of a hot topic. Television ratings flow to celebrity news and other sensational content. Dateline beats out Frontline in the ratings. Even print suffers from that problem-more readers pick up People than The Atlantic.

3. I'm tired of seeing Wonkette used as an example of blogging. Cox is a hired hand for a corporate product. That is decidedly not typical.

Face it-if blogging is rock and roll, Wonkette is the Partridge Family.

4. I know that bloggers can't be journalists because they don't do real reporting. Does the press maintain the same distinction in house? Many, (most?) of the people who put together the New York Times do not do "reporting". They assign stories, they write background pieces using government statistics, they review books, plays, and movies. Are they not journalists?

All these non-reporting tasks are things that bloggers do as well.*

The "journalists must report" definition is even harder to maintain when it comes to the people on television. The people on camera do not do most of the reporting; that is what researchers and producers do.

So-is Peter Jennings not a journalist? Does the Columbia School of Journalism pull the membership card from graduates who work on TV?

5. It is true that bloggers don't do much "investigative journalism" as the MSM understands it. But I am not certain that this is a failing for reasons discussed here.


* Except for Kaus and his tongue-in-cheek assignment desk, bloggers don't assign stories like traditional editors. But that is because the Times and the blogosphere work on two radically different models. The Times is vertically-integrated and resource-constrained (they have a finite number of paid reporters.) The blogosphere is networked and has vastly more resources (both numbers and expertise). Instapundit does not have to commission a piece on nanotechnology to bring it to his readers' attention as a traditional editor does; some blogger has already written it. But Instapundit and the traditional assignment editor both perform exactly the same function for readers-pointing them toward a piece of writing that is important and interesting.