Interesting day in the “Blogs vs. Journalism” realm. In one ring we see the exhaustive liveblogging of the Libby trial (most notably at firedoglake), with Internet readers getting blow-by-blow details of exactly how Washington’s press corps was played by the Vice President’s office, revealing the standard operating procedures for how some “news” gets created/reported in Washington. By the time the mainstream press pundits bring their analysis to the table in the Wednesday morning cycle, bloggers and their commenters will already have sliced, diced, fact-checked and probed this eight ways from Sunday.
And meanwhile, Time’s Jay Carney is being schooled in the craft of blogging by hundreds of (mostly civil!) commenters for a mistaken post – on a very black-and-white, easily checked issue, presidents’ poll numbers – which he has now “corrected” by calling the commenters “dittoheads” and attempting to dance around his basic error. Throw into the mix the bizarre revelation that Time’s Washington Bureau Chief was unclear on who sits behind the President at the State of the Union.
It’s not about your resumé and it’s not about the job title. It’s about who does the best, most reliable work. If that’s at a web site, okay. If that’s at Time magazine, okay as well. Only insecure assholes fall back on “Don’t you know who I am!” type of pronouncements to cover up their mistakes and make themselves seem important.
You’re only as good as your output.
A.
Dang, Carney needs to grow up. For every “you MORAN!” comment, there were three “Mr. Carney, may I politely correct you…” comments. Defensiveness and childish name-calling aren’t going to get him any points from his readers.
I hope Time’s bean-counters are paying attention–they have a chance to win some readers using the blog approach, but they won’t do it this way.
only as good as your output. Exactly! Can’t count the number of times that thought has gone through my head these past five years as I reflected on the crap that passes for journalism nowadays. Where do these people come from?
and, as i read them, the “you moron!” comments were mainly in response to carney’s refusal to simply say, “i goofed, here’s the facts,” and move on, rather than try to spin his way out with a “well, if you look at it, here’s a fact that is true that i never mentioned in the first place so stop picking on me” approach.