Friday, March 31, 2006

"The State of the News Media 2006:" What about blogs?


Continuing to deal with the silliness that is Russell Smith's Globe article on blogs, recall that Smith used this study as the foundation of a number of uncomplimentary observations on blogs. (Sadly, you can't see his Smith's claims themselves but, trust me, none of them paint blogs in a positive light.)

But as commenter "noel m" points out back here, Smith is being awfully selective with his quotes since that study most certainly does say good things about blogs (all emphasis added):

What we found, generally, is that readers of those blogs learned of some of the same stories that were in the traditional media that day, but often from a different angle or different source. They also heard about many items not found in the other media, such as a scholarly debate over the concept of a “living constitution,” a recent blogger convention in Nashville, a controversy at Commonweal Magazine over the dismissal of the editor, thoughts from a group of Iranian bloggers who met with one of their presidential candidates, and the blogger Wonkette’s “Bushfish” logo. In this regard, the bloggers are adding not just opinion to the media mix, but also new items to the agenda.

The Daily Kos offered the most multi-tiered post. It began with a link to an Associated Press story that he pulled from NYTimes.com. Kos picked up on an interesting element missed in the mainstream press coverage we examined — the practice of having new police force recruits line up together outside before they are searched. “Umm, why do they still do this? . . . Why don’t they search people before they stand in line? That much explosive can’t be easy to hide from the most cursory search,” Kos wondered.

Well, how about that? Apparently, blogs have something to contribute to the discourse after all. Not that you'd have learned that from Smith's piece. What a wanker.

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