UMR , Jay, and others on “reporting” and bloggers.  Robin Russell at UMR has written a piece about blogging and journalism.

After all, it’s pretty simple to Google various news sites and then give your opinion. But that doesn’t make you a “newspaperman,” as Feagler writes:

“Bloggers. Have they ridden with a candidate in the middle of the
night? Have they covered the murder of a young girl lying dead in the grass but looking as if she’s sleeping? Have they covered anything?
“Or do they merely spew opinions and Google? Once, you had to pay dues in this business. Give me one good reason why we should let the bloggers off the hook.”

Frankly, it has always rankled me to see online “news” sites — even in Methodism — where someone slaps a byline on information culled from other sources. That’s a quick and easy way of passing along news, but it’s really just taking the credit for the work done by others.

Hardly the same as doing the work of reporting yourself, as those of us who have plodded through countless and diverse assignments on deadline at daily newspapers well know. Yet it happens all the time.

United Methodist Reporter Blog: A journalistic rant on bloggers

My question here is,  where are these kinds of sites she’s talking about? And then,  yes, I myself read a ton of sites that do a lot of linking of “other” news,  and offer commentary.  It’s really what often happens with the news itself.  All news has a point of view, anyway(Fox is probably the most transparent , obvious example,  but so too do MSNNBC, CNN,  AND the dead-tree/traditional news.) I might as well find the lens that shows me the best insights and perspectives on the news.

What Robin does in this blog piece is also pretty darn close to being an example of what she and Dick Feagler complain about,  since Feagler’s article has basically already made the same point she does.  So how is this not yet another example of “slapping a byline on information culled from other sources”? And don’t say: “I attributed the source”.  So do the bloggers.  It’s called LINKING.  And it’s also attributed by (Hat tip to linktoOriginalSource)

Mr Feagler strikes me as woefully ignorant of the diversity of the blogosphere,  describing ‘it” is a monolith,  which is probably how he sees it.  I think the first order of business with the likes of him is to look elsewhere for insights on journalism vs blogosphere.  The whole confrontation here belies this myth of a monolithic blogosphere “thing”.  It isn’t “journalism” vs.  SOME blogs are done by journalists AS journalists.  Most are not.  There are WAY more opinion blogs and “aggregator-type” blogs (blogs that scan and list and link to news on a regular basis),  and many others are somewhere in between,  doing some scanning and interspersing commentary and sometimes bursting into a full-blown ‘”rant”.

Blogs are needed to counter the kind of simplistic, paranoid rants of an old reporter.  Feagler may well be much more than that,  but when he embarks on a very “blog-like rant” like he did in this article,  we’re better off hearing from those in the blogosphere who are anything BUT what he describes.

Robin tells Jay he is “taking this way too personally”,  but my sense was that Jay was offering a corrective just of the sort I am here,  and to challenge the myth that reporters , trained in journalism,  already have all the experience needed to be an objective source on just about any topic.  Jay points out how pastors have just as much “experience” to claim that make their insights a welcome source of perspective in their world.

Also, Feagle shows his ignorance of the blogosphere also by his rant about Google being the source of bloggers finding news.  He really has no clue.  Other bloggers (usually via RSS,  which alerts me to who on my list has something new,  and often many on my list ARE sources from journalism (Josh Marshall. for example),  most  are church related folks and theology blogging folks.  These are the perspectives I seek.  Jay is one of those. Thanks for your comments, Jay!

And Dick,  here’s my answer to:

Have they covered anything? or do they merely spew opinions and Google? Once, you had to pay dues in this business. Give me one good reason why we should let the bloggers off the hook

As you go on about experience and “being there”,  try getting a little experience and perspective with the blogosphere,  since you are TOTALLY lacking here,  and so you are woefully unqualified to be commenting on the blogosphere.  It’s fine to show your ignorance,  it’s part of what one might forgive as “human” and “feisty”,  but it’s a bit ironic to be “ranting” about blogs because they’re not “journalists” with objectivity and life experience,  without any objectivity or life experience in this matter.