I’m coming to this a bit late, I know…but still wanted to leave the comment:

yes, I was dismayed by what HT said, and even more dismayed when she kept saying how the people are “zombies.” Maybe the White House Press Corps are zombies right now…but they’ve got a tough job (maybe tougher than in the past)

But the people are hardly zombies. We’re out here having conversations every day.

It’s a heck of alot more than what people were doing when they sat in their armchairs and yelled at Walter Cronkite.

Robert Feinman’s got a point about changing the terminology a bit. Blogging is often about conversation rather than journalism (which is a process involving more than one person having an opinion.) There are those who use the blogging tool to create journalism…and they are some seriously smart cookies (you missed meeting some of them Jeff). But the rest of us are having conversations–sometimes about what y’all are doing, sometimes about our lives. Sometimes we’re using the blogging tool to write out short stories or exchange info about design and code.

Blogs are not one monolithic thing. Blogs are lots of things. Some will use them for journalism, some will use them for conversations, still others will use them for other things. It’s a form of communication– not necessarily always a form of journalism.

Press wrestles With SCOTUS Takedown Of War President

by DemFromCT

It’s a fascinating thing to observe the press struggle with issues that half the country got past years ago. The deference to the President (not Bush, the office) remains astoundingly wide. Even when the POTUS screws up, the press won’t say so… at least not right away, and not directly. But now that an equally revered institutation, and a conservative court at that, has handed down a major ruling on the limits of presidential power, the press is struugling to catch up.

[snip]

I’m not a Bush supporter. I voted for a 3rd party candidate in ‘04 and will do so again in ‘08. I agree with Helen Thomas to an extent, in that there is a lack of leadership. However, that cannot be pinned on one man or one party. Do you oppose the war in Iraq? Then blame both parties because they both made it possible, only one party’s members are now backpeddling away from their vote and trying to blame Bush for deceiving them. This despite them having all the info that Bush had available when they voted in favor of the action. I think Hillary Clinton is a devil woman, but at least she isn’t attempting a revisionist history where her war vote is concerned.

The MSM doesn’t even come close.

Bloggers are the biggest liars in the world, because they’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear.

The media doesn’t do research, it rewrites press releases and leaks.

The flacks and leakers can distribute those things without “the media”.

Others, like me, are not journalists. I sometimes do some information gathering from published sources to back some of my remarks, but I don’t contact people or attend newsworthy events. If I have to refer to what I do, I say I’m an armchair philosopher. I do comment on blogs and post essays on my own web site.

So maybe we need to use terms like “reporters” vs “commentators”. The french have the world “feuilletonist” which expresses the role of a person with lots of opinions. The outlet has just been moved from print to online. Helen Thomas is different then me and Markos and this should be recognized.

Helen, I love what you’ve done as a body of work over time, but please, get with the program. The times aren’t a changin’ - the times have in fact changed and we need to see “the times” as they are and work as best we can through whatever tools are available - blogs included - to make them what we want and what we need.

BTW, every time an openly biased journalist speaks down their nose at bloggers it makes me happy to be a blogger.

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting for the old, but on building the new.” — Socrates

Good luck!