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Those Dangerous Internet 'Amateurs'

White House reporter Helen Thomas isn't a big fan of "amateur journalists" (that's you, bloggers).

"I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they're a journalist and doesn't understand the ethics," she said. "We do have to have some sense of what's right and wrong in this job. ... So if there's this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do ... it's dangerous."

ESPN TV and radio personality Stephen Smith doesn't care much for the Internet upstarts, either. In fact, it sounds like he's a fan of Internet regulation to keep blogs muzzled.

"I respect the journalism industry," he said, "and the fact of the matter is ... someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can."

Here are some other blog bits to digest this afternoon:

-- The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has begun posting preliminary transcripts of oversight hearings, and Dan Froomkin of washingtonpost.com thinks that presents a great opportunity for bloggers to find great stories untold by the mainstream media.

-- A RedState blogger spent some time traveling with the Republican presidential campaign of John McCain. Read his reports here.

-- The Republican National Committee is recruiting bloggers to apply for jobs and "help elect the next Republican president" -- and YouTube applications are encouraged.

-- The Brookings Institution, which now has a much snazzier, blog-like Web site these days, hosted a discussion late last month titled "Bloggers, Buzz and Sound Bites: Innovative Media Approaches to Humanitarian Response." Visit the blog at the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet for a report on the roundtable.

-- What ever happened to S.R. Sidarth, the young campaign volunteer that former Sen. George Allen foolishly called "Macaca," arguably bringing his Senate tenure to a premature end? He's now working for the presidential campaign of Democrat Bill Richardson.

-- Blog P.I. compares three sites that are raising money for Republican candidates and ponders the idea of a RedState/Human Events presidential debate -- not exactly a fair idea in my book, at least for Ron Paul.

-- Liberal bloggers had fun at the expense of their conservative rivals last month by voting on the "wingnuttiest" blog posts ever. Now Right Wing News has returned the disfavor by highlighting this year's worst quotes from Daily Kos, one of the top liberal blogs. RWN compiled its first annual list of such quotes early this year.

-- Daily Kos announced its 2008 class of contributing editors.

-- Libel in the blogosphere: Read what Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, has to say about the subject. Reynolds, by the way, is among the bloggers on the list of ABA Journal's top 100 law blogs.

-- When should journalists give credit to the bloggers whose legwork and thinking lead to mainstream media stories? The answer is simple, really: Always. But if you want a deeper discussion about the issue in the context of a blog/MSM controversy in Minnesota, go to Poynter Online.

-- Smart journalist are starting to realize how valuable Wikipedia is as a resource tool, despite its flaws -- something bloggers have known for a while now. Bloggers, in other words, are among the trend-setters in online journalism these days.

-- For all of the talk about citizen media, networked journalism and the like, including much of it here and at my own private project, AirCongress, many new media innovations fall flat as businesses. With that in mind, online publishing visionaries -- like those in an entrepreneurial journalism class at City University of New York -- should read what Steve Outing, whose Enthusiast Group recently joined the list of failures, has to say in "An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media."

Posted by Danny | 12:06 PM

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