inkbluesky

leaving port. in memory of my old friend who had one of the world’s best jazz collections, told great stories and gave truth to the myth that you can be tough as nails and have a kind heart.

Like the occasional hail storm we regularly get a credentialed journalist that takes a few pot shots at blogs. Recently it was Michael Skube in the L.A. Times. Jay Rosen shoots back, The journalism that bloggers actually do

Story jumps to last Sunday. Josh Marshall reads his name in Skube’s column. Strange, because Marshall’s blog isn’t representative of the charges, which are depressingly familiar. “The blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more,” Skube wrote. But there’s a lot more than bubbling opinion at Marshall’s bustling site, which includes TPM Muckraker, where two full-time investigative reporters work. Had the author ever seen it?

In an email exchange, the author tells Marshall, “I didn’t put your name into the piece and haven’t spent any time on your site.” Huh? Turns out an editor stuck Marshall’s name in there because the column didn’t have enough examples in it. Skube agreed to the script change, but this meant he had no idea what his character was saying.

Dan Gillmor, a former newspaper man, calls it “journalistic malpractice.” And it is that. Also pedagogical buffoonery. In Skube’s columns, there’s a teacher who doesn’t believe in doing his homework - any homework.

I don’t do journalism on this blog, but Marshall does and Steven Clemons. And since we’ve developed a terrible national habit of conflating editorialists with regular reporters Digby does such great analysis of the news that after reading her and then listening to some bonehead on TV you get the definite feeling that the broadcast media is in dire need of an overhaul - as an example, how in the world does a brainless smug twit like Glenn Beck get an hour a day to dribble over issues yet there is no broadcast equivalent of Marshall or Digby. Media criticism is a good thing, blogs included, but if Skube and others really cared about the state of modern journalism they might want to turn their attention to the huge failures of Faux and CNN and then work their way over to blogs.

As we all know by now where the Trilateral Commission leaves off running the world from their bunker under Gotham City, Japanese teen girls take over. The lash phenomenon here and here. I don’t know what to think, well except wouldn’t it make your eye lids tired lifting all that weight.