Wizblog

Peggy Gets It

Somewhere today I saw this Peggy Noonan column referred to as an "olive branch" to the blogosphere from the Wall Street Journal. Whether or not that's what it was, after the WSJ lectured and condescended to bloggers on matters of judgment and journalism, it good to know that at least Peggy gets blogs.

...Bloggers are...selling the smartest take on a story. They're selling an original insight, a new area of inquiry. Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles has his bright take, Andrew Sullivan had his, InstaPundit has his. They're all selling their shrewdness, experience, depth. This too is a public service....And they're doing it free. That is, the Times costs me a dollar and so does the Journal, but Kausfiles doesn't cost a dime. This too is a public service.

...It is not true that there are no controls. It is not true that the blogosphere is the Wild West. What governs members of the blogosphere is what governs to some degree members of the MSM, and that is the desire for status and respect. In the blogosphere you lose both if you put forward as fact information that is incorrect, specious or cooked. You lose status and respect if your take on a story that is patently stupid. You lose status and respect if you are unprofessional or deliberately misleading. And once you've lost a sufficient amount of status and respect, none of the other bloggers link to you anymore or raise your name in their arguments. And you're over. The great correcting mechanism for people on the Web is people on the Web.(ellipses mine - Ed.)

How true that is, and it helps make a related point. The backlash rhetoric from media people in the Jordan matter about "right-wing lynch mobs" and "salivating morons" and such seems utterly silly to anyone who actually reads the blogs of the core group of people who did the bulk of the reporting on the Jordan story. I'm talking about Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Ed Morrissey, the Power Line guys, La Shawn Barber, Jim Geraghty, Bill Roggio. These are not people who traffic in name-calling and vitriol and slime, and they don't have much time for those who do. This not to say that the slimers aren't out there, just beware of frightened or ignorant blogophobes painting with broad brushes.

The notion that mainstream journalists have standards and accountability and bloggers do not is now rightly greeted with hoots and howls by anyone who hasn't been asleep at the mouse (or hasn't read a newspaper) for five years. Blogger-bashers who love to draw a clear line of distinction between "professional" journalists and bloggers betray their cluelessness at the outset anyway. While some bloggers have used their exposure to boost them into mainstream writing gigs, more often professional writers, journalists, critics, authors and editors have either "graduated" to blogging from careers with impeccable mainstream credentials, or are doing it, as they say, on the side. And many of these people are right at the heart of the blogging enterprise. The list in this category is too long to do justice to here, but a few come to mind, like of course Andrew Sullivan, and David Horowitz, Roger Simon, Terry Teachout, Michelle Malkin, Victor Davis Hanson, Jeff Jarvis, plus other accomplished writers who are blogging while attached to "mainstream" publications, like Jim Geraghty, Jonathan Last, Virginia Postrel, Matthew Yglesias, Roger Kimball , James Taranto, and the Corner crew for starters. The lines are blurring more each day as MSM companies establish blogs or reasonable facsimiles. The stereotype of the pajama-clad wannabe doesn't hold.

And none of this is to slight the many other smart, engaged and talented people whose notoriety has come primarily from their blogs. They are credentialed and respectable in their own right, as Hugh Hewitt helps to demonstrate here. There's a reason they are widely read and appreciated, and it's not because they are vicious, knuckle-dragging, partisan hacks. In fact, as wild and wooly as it can get, there's a certain comity and neighborliness about the blogosphere that certain MSM journalists would do well to emulate. It manifests in a general politeness that gives "hat tips", admits errors, links to sources, welcomes comments and email, says thanks, and only occasionally directs the reader to the Tip Jar. Every day I wonder how I got along before this smorgasbord of quality writing and information was at my fingertips.

Now I realize I'm setting myself up here for reminders of the many rude, thoughtless and profane exceptions to the above statement, but that is a testament mostly to the breadth and diversity of a booming medium. From where I sit, I don't see an awful lot of "salivating" in my blogosphere. What I see is a remarkable citizen's conversation. Even those of us out here on the edge, who count our hits in hundreds instead of tens of thousands per day, have a voice in that raucous but healthy conversation. And Peggy Noonan gets that, which is a good thing.

Peggy Noonan. This too is a public service.

Posted by dan at February 17, 2005 10:01 PM