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MSM Talking Points About Blogs

You've heard them all before:

-- Blogs are not journalism.
-- You can't write with authority unless you are a reporter.
-- Bloggers don't have editors.

But newspaper dinosaurs like Pete Hamill have been repeating those same tired and irrelevant criticisms of blogs for so long that I'm beginning to think there really is a mainstream media memo somewhere that I'm missing. Maybe the green-eyeshade gang won't show it to me because they think I'm one of The Others in the publishing world.

Ironically, Mr. Hamill (like so many of my journalistic brethren before him) exposed himself as an ignorant critic when he admitted that he would never stoop so low as to "squander reading time combing the blogs."

News flash, Hamill the Hypocrite: If you had done your reporting and actually read some blogs, including this one, you would know that there is plenty of journalism in our sphere. You would also know that a blog is just another communications medium -- like a Web site or a television station or those newspapers you (and I) love so much.

You're a talented journalist, but you've become too comfortable in your role as an author and "opinion maven." You should, to paraphrase your own words, get out of the ivory tower, go to the place and look at this wonderful "thing" we call the blogosphere.

I assure you that you will learn plenty. One very important thing you'll learn is that an MSM organization as revered as the Knight Foundation last month recognized a handful of bloggers by giving them real money in the first annual "news challenge" awards. The winners included:

-- Lisa Williams of Placeblogger to "make it easier for people to find hyperlocal news and information about their city or neighborhood through promotion of 'universal geotagging' in blogs" ($222,000). It doesn't get much more journalistic than "hyperlocal" news.

-- Amy Gahran and Adam Glenn of I, Reporter to "track Boulder, Colo.’s, implementation of a carbon tax" ($90,000). "I, Reporter" sounds an awful lot to me like reporting will be involved.

-- And nine bloggers who won $15,000 each to pursue their pet projects, such as "a centralized, user-maintained news system."

If you dig deeply enough into the blogosphere, Mr. Hamill, you might even learn a thing or two about "Moby Dick."

Posted by Danny | 07:39 PM

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