The mainstream media is finally coming around. Peggy Noonan of the WSJ writes on the impact blogging is having on professional journalism. Interesting quote:
Someone is going to address the "bloggers are untrained journalists" question by looking at exactly what "training," what education in the art / science / craft / profession of journalism, the reporters and editors of the MSM have had in the past 60 years or so. It has seemed to me the best of them never went to J-school but bumped into journalism along the way–walked into a radio station or newspaper one day and found their calling. Bloggers signify a welcome return to that old style. In journalism you learn by doing, which is what a lot of bloggers are doing.
I’m glad she said it. The mainstream media has been hammering away at this point, and I have thought for a while that it was a sideshow. While there are some extraordinarily bright lights in journalism, my lingering impression of journalists is how often they miss the story, get it wrong, or surrender to the instinct to focus on celebrity, "if it bleeds it leads", and spin. They are increasingly abandoning their role of reporting to us on the way of things, and something else needs to fill the void. The internet, for example.
For more on these themes, start at Dan Gillmor’s new blog.
And on a lighter note, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have an insanely funny riff here.