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... some sober thoughts about the blogosphere from the Commissar:

Some bloggers, like this one (me, The Commissar), have revelled in our depression and low energy state. Others have ranted wildly. (No need for links here, folks.) Where was The Commissar's editor? His copywriter? His make-up man? Can you imagine, "This is Jim Lehrer and I am F*ing depressed tonight folks; the news just sucks. Bush is up 20 points in the polls; he's gonna mop up the floor with John Kerry in November, and I wanna slit my wrists."
...
CBS and PBS don't do that. They are grown-ups. Biased, Lefty, annoyingly agenda-driven grown-ups, to be sure, but at least they do not run around constantly nattering and dissing their journalistic foes.
...
Some bloggers might react with, "it's my blog and I'll rant if I want to." That's fine. But, then we cannot, as many have, brag about being "the peoples newspaper." If bloggers want to rant endlessly, by analogy, if they want to remain immature forever, that is clearly their privilege. But we cannot have it both ways. If we are the big guys, the grown-ups, the people's newspaper, then our readers will expect that we act like such.

My thoughts? Yes, the blogosphere is of course much less professional than the mainstream media, and those that claim blog "superiority" are sorely deluded. But it's the nature of the beast. The blogosphere will never supplant traditional media; it's not designed to.
It's just an additional, inherently different, immature, opinionated, complementary vehicle. Blogs can keep Big Media honest, but they should never replace professional outlets. For all the spin you get from Ted Koppel, imagine some little wacko-loon being solely raised on a hermetically sealed newsfeed from Kos, or Atrios ... or me! Bad news, man. Bad news.

Go read the whole post.

Posted by Bill at May 15, 2004 10:50 PM | TrackBack (3)

Comments

Posted by: Jeff Harrell at May 15, 2004 11:34 PM