Bloggers as seen by the MSM print media

Blogs have received attention from the print media in the last few weeks and most of it was defensive. The public editor of my local paper, The Oregonian, weighed in today with Blogs deserve consideration by newsrooms. It is the most positive and least defensive piece I have read.

Public editor: Bloggers break stories but require skeptical reading.

Now that's certainly true but newspapers require skeptical reading and why even bother with the Cable Tabloid Networks.

If you only read the news pages of The Oregonian in recent weeks, you wouldn't know that a "reporter" for an activist Republican Web site lobbed softball questions at White House press conferences.

And if you only read the news pages of The Oregonian, you wouldn't know that the top CNN news executive had stepped down because of controversy about his remarks on whether U.S. soldiers targeted journalists.

Yet both of those stories received extensive attention among the mushrooming Web logs on the Internet, where news of the flaps first broke.

Yes, and still nothing other than an editorial from his own paper, although as I have said before I do realize that a local paper like The Oregonian depends on wire service or major newspaper feeds for national stories.

But the basic facts some blogs posted about White House reporter James Guckert, who also was known as Jeff Gannon, and CNN news executive Eason Jordan were not disputed. Why not cover the stories? When I relayed reader interest in the story of Guckert/Gannon, editors were mostly indifferent. They noted that few stories were moving on the wire services, which they viewed as an indication of relative importance. Besides, editors said, they were having trouble getting more important stories about Iraq or Social Security into the newspaper's limited space for national and international news.

The Guckert/Gannon story certainly didn't have the significance that passionate Web watchers assigned to it. Yet it arguably raised questions about the White House press credential process and whether the administration, already stung by disclosures of columnists being paid to promote its agenda, was planting a GOP advocate in the press corps.

Yes it was news, so who decided it wasn't important enough? More importantly what motivated that decision?

Sitemeter tells me that someone from Oregonian.com is checking this ever so humble blog several times a week and has been for several months. Who might that be?

The opinionated nature of most blogs helps explain why their topics often will gravitate into the newspaper through columnists. Bob Caldwell, The Oregonian's editorial page editor, says editorial writers and columnists often review the blogs because they offer opinions to consider.

And although the news pages didn't publish stories about either topic, the editorial pages published opinion columns about them and an editorial about the Guckert/Gannon story charging that the mainstream media should give the story more attention.

That is evidence of the lack of influence of the newsroom on editorial or editorial writers on news stories. More important to this debate, it also symbolizes the gulf between bloggers and newsrooms.

So what now?

MacKinnon helped organize a conference last month called "Blogging, Journalism and Credibility" at Harvard. The intent was to try to bring together the two sides. "There is a new, emerging ecosystem, and it's not clear how it's going to shape up," she says. "But there's room for everybody, and the public is potentially going to be much better off for the change, if we try to get everybody working together more intelligently."

That might mean finding ways to link citizen blogging to the journalism of newspapers. It might mean reporters and editors more routinely checking blogs as tip sheets, rather than only relying on traditional sources. Or it might mean devoting a reporter or editor to monitor blogs for a column that could point readers to the wheat and warn them about the chaff.

Newspaper readers clearly would benefit, especially if journalists then apply their skepticism and standards to what they read on blogs. Dan Batz of Portland picked up on the Guckert/Gannon story between blogs and broadcast reports. But he kept looking for the news pages to help make sense of the story, especially after reading the newspaper's editorial. "I don't know how it can't be considered a news story," he says. "I think The Oregonian's a good paper, but I'm mystified."

I congratulate public editor Walden for a good commentary. He seems to be part of the reality based community and not defensively burying his head in the sand.