I'm just getting back into the swing of things after spending the better part of the past two weeks in airplanes, and I do have a few things that I'd like to catch up on that I think deserve some attention.
But in the meantime, there was a great article in the LA Times about the impact that blogs can have on driving issues into the main stream media.
The specific example is how Josh Marshall's blog, Talking Points Memo, easily the blog I'm most addicted to, was the main medium that dug out the huge story in the US right now over the firing of US Attorneys.
The second half of the article included a section that I felt sums up pretty well what I try and do over here - that is write opinion not journalism.
So while I certainly come at things from a specific angle, my potential biases are declared, whereas those in the traditional media can be much more subtle and undeclared (take the Bermuda Sun's rather rapid swing lately towards unadulterated fawning of the PLP in their news articles - more on that in a subsequent post).
Here's a few paragraphs that capture political blogging versus journalism pretty well:
The blogs that have captured the most attention are those that devote themselves mainly to politics and public affairs. These are almost always run by partisans of one side or the other. In that, they are nearly the opposite of the sort of coverage presented in traditional media, whose coverage at least attempts to be neutral on questions of policy.This neutrality is a favorite target of bloggers who say that mainstream journalism objectivity disguises hidden biases of the form, if not the writer. The bloggers contend that these biases can render neutrality into bland, even neutered reporting that rewards those intent on manipulating it.
Many critiques from both sides of the blogging-MSM divide are accurate, if sometimes misplaced. The chief criticisms of blogging from defenders of the MSM are, one, the pajama charge — that is, bloggers are not professional journalists and don't do much reporting (thus the image of them sitting at home in their pajamas) — and, two, the incivility charge, that many bloggers use impolite language.
Most bloggers, in fact, are not journalists and do little if any reporting. But most bloggers don't claim to be journalists. They're bloggers. The incivility charge is true too. Many bloggers use bad language, but so occasionally does the New Yorker, and no one accuses it of lacking manners.
I try not to use bad language, but I can be impolite at times.
And, as a reminder, my declared intent here is to "Inform, amuse, provoke"...with "provoke" in the sense of not merely aggravating people - although my opinions clearly can have that effect on some of the blind followers - but as in provoking thought.
