No doubt about it, blogging is an important advance in journalism.
Blogs like the DailyKos constitute a major advance in the collection and digestion of news. Maybe the greatest advance in a century, but before we become too full of ourselves we ought to take a deep breath and acknowledge some of the problems with blogging.
To me the biggest problem is the same problem suffered by the modern press--the herd mentality. We seem to focus on one story over and over again. Plame is important, and it is interesting because it is has elements of abuse of power and mystery at the highest levels of government. It is good entertainment and I for one follow it closely, but what are we missing as we read hours of posts on the subject? Everybody posts on the same topic, everybody reads every post on the topic and why not that is what people want to read. But the greatest potential strenght of blogging is seeing the world through hundreds or maybe thousands of sets of eyes. If they are all looking at the same thing they don't add much. I really like the diaries and threads that discuss local politics in states a thousand miles away. These diaries are a wonderful source of diverse viewpoints. Too bad they are lost in the mists of the back pages so quickly. Too bad only a few national topics seem to be featured on the front page.
A second problem is the confusion of opinion with fact. I was reading Kevin Drum's latest Plame thread earlier this morning and somebody made the comment that the VP has the inherent authority to unclassify information. Apparently that is an idea currently being repeated on the right side of the blogsphere. Well, that is an easily checked fact. Something a print journalist would be expected to look up. Bloggers either don't know how to check such facts or don't know that it is important to check them. Over on Washingtonmonthly a number of posts were wasted debating the Plame story from that point of view.
A third problem is that everybody writes and nobody reads--everybody thinks his opinion is fully formed. Well, I hope not. The fun of blogging is watching consensus emerge. We all need to read more and post less.
I could go on, but it is time to go to work, and that is the final problem. Most of us have an excuse for not being professional journalists. We are professional at something else. We tend to give ourselves a free pass when we fail to meet professional standards. Maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should demand as much out of ourselves as we demand out of Judy Miller or Bob Woodward. Not a very high standard it seems. Maybe we should hold our postings to the same high standard to which we hold ourselves in our daily work.
Anyway, this morning professional journalists fell for Libby's lawyers spin hook line and sinker. I for one am glad bloggers caught it, hopefully the mainstream media will change the story. We shouldn't become too smug. Finding the Truth is unending.