The Ombudsgod highlights a jeremiad against bloggers by Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman (free reg. req.). He's a veteran Twin Cities journo who usually wears a big "D" smack in the middle of his forehead.
Coleman writes:
...a lot of the attack against the mainstream media is coming from bloggers, which is like astronomers being assaulted by people who swear that aliens force them to have sex with Martians...blogs....are to journalism what ticks are to elephants. Ticks may make the elephants nuts, but that doesn't mean they will replace them. You can't ride a tick.....Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world.
...We are not dealing with journalism, people. We are dealing with Internet chat rooms: sleazy and unreliable, with no accountability. Most bloggers are not fit to carry a reporter's notebook.
Ombudsgod retorts, very much on point:
I have news for you, old man, most reporters are not fit to carry a reporter's notebook either.His main problem is that bloggers have opinions. The job of the public, he would have you think, is to accept the opinion of the local newspaper, not tell others their own. Hey Coleman, that's called commentary. Editorial. Columnists. We can say anything we want because it isn't straight news. Isn't that what papers tell readers when they complain about the liberal tripe shoveled on them for decades?
The son of a senator that claims he was born with no advantages, Coleman says that what makes him so much better than all the bloggers is that he "knows stuff"....Nick claims he has an ear trained to detect baloney, I'm sure Dan Rather thinks the same thing. But what makes you think your baloney detector is better than that of a cop? Or a lawyer? Or a teacher? Or a parent?....
....It's always hard watching the last few seconds of the elk as it lies limp in the tiger's mouth, but that's the circle of life.
As an aging Lefty Lib (an ineffably sad species to begin with), and a columnist for a metro daily, Coleman should understand that in this day and age, bloggers are going to be all over him.
And they have been. A few examples; here, here, and here.
Once in a while, they even offer praise.
So? This: the men who buy ink by the barrel - and their minions - don't alone filter the public dialog for TV and radio newscasters, and the rest of us. Not anymore, Nick.
You don't have to like that.
But you'd better get used to it.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 29, 2004 09:49 AM
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