A portion of Howard Kurtz's column today is on blogging. Somehow he managed to write paragraph after paragraph on blogging and bloggers without ever mentioning the debacle that is the Post blog.
An excerpt is posted below. The comment about "well-crafted writing" is amusing given the caliber of Howie's prose. But to really see how disingenuous this piece is, read the whole thing at the link below.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html
Blogs: Good or Evil?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 28, 2006; 7:42 AM
I write again today about blogging because I believe it has become the most vibrant, innovative and controversial form of information delivery in the media world today.
Also, I was stuck for a column.
"Balanced against these goods are the pernicious effects of blogs: They elevate analysis over news-gathering; they value speed over judiciousness; and they encourage the practice of journalism to turn in on itself, to tend ever more toward navel-gazing.
"But the biggest evil of blogs is that first flaw, blogging's original sin: the discounting of news-gathering in favor of news analysis. Bloggers are forever telling us how easy journalism is, yet very few of them have ever really practiced it. Sure, they may have written opinion pieces that compare favorably to the work of Molly Ivins or Ann Coulter, but opinion writing is a tiny - and let's be honest, inconsequential - corner of the journalism world. Real journalism - the practice of adding to the store of public knowledge by reporting news - is a difficult, thankless, and often unpleasant task. Bloggers want no part of it. Everyone wants E.J. Dionne's job; no one wants to be Michael Dobbs . . .
"Another worry is that, as a medium, the blog does not value well-crafted writing. Except for Mark Steyn and James Lileks, it's hard to pick out even three beautiful writers from the millions of bloggers. Again, the fault here lies with the medium: Being a good writer helps a blogger about as much as a good singing voice helps a broadcast anchor."