Wordblog

If any of those people who believe bloggers are a complete waste of time and that blogs are no more than rants from corner bar stools, happen across this post, they should should read the following. It will confirm their opinion:

My advice? Retire.

Commentary on Blogs: All the noise that fits by Michael Skube in the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 19, 2007.

Retire, man. I’m serious. You’re an embarrassment to my profession, to the university where you teach, and to the craft of reporting you claim to defend. It is time for you to quit, as you’ve clearly called it quits on learning— and reporting. Ring this guy up and ask him to go bass fishing or something. You’re not doing anyone any good— you’re just insulting your own bio. And when you’re done lecturing us on “the patient fact-finding of reporters,” tell the godforsaken LA Times they’re going to have to run a correction. The Post hasn’t won a Pulitzer for its reporting on Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Jeez.

The author is Jay Rosen, also a journalism academic, and one of the people who has done most to develop ideas about the ways blogs can facilitate pro-am journalism.

He argues his points well, although sometimes at too great a length, thoughtfully and influentially. Suddenly we get this example of everything the critics of blogging light on. So what made him take-off on this ill-tempered, inelegant post which does no service to his cause?

Michael Skube, who teaches journalism at Elon University in North Carolina, wrote an op ed piece headed “Blogs: all the noise that fits” in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. The second paragraph read:

Bloggers now are everywhere among us, and no one asks if we don’t need more full-throated advocacy on the Internet. The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined.

Rosen has provide ample evidence to support the final phrase.

Skube makes his case about blogs and presents his view strongly, writing:

One gets the uneasy sense that the blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more. The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt. Skepticism, restraint, a willingness to suspect judgment and to put oneself in the background — these would not seem to be a blogger’s trademarks.

Overstated, yes. But but there is nothing in the opinion that we do not hear everyday. A blog is like a piece of paper, you can write anything on it: some of it may be journalism, most of will not be.

Skube’s article does contain errors. The Washington Post did not win a Pulitzer for reporting on the Walter Reed hospital. That mistake remains unexplained.

He used the name of Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo in a paragraph about bloggers who are “insistent partisans in political debate”. In an email to Marshall, Skube explained: “Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples …”

Some sloppy journalism has been happening at the LA Times but it does not justify the contentless diatribe launched by Rosen. He does debate a disservice.