(From the diaries. Jay is a professor and a former department chair at the renown journalism school at NYU. I moved things around from his original post. See his update below the fold for how you can help Jay respond to this nonsense -- kos)
About that Sunday op ed, Blogs: All the noise that fits by Michael Skube in the Los Angeles Times....
Retire, man. I'm serious. You're an embarrassment to my profession, to the university where you teach, and to the craft of reporting you claim to defend. You were pulling these tricks two years ago, and the fact that the LA Times let you do it again reflects poorly on them. Ring this guy up and ask him to go bass fishing or something. You're not doing anyone any good-- you're just insulting your own bio. And when you're done lecturing all of us on "the patient fact-finding of reporters," tell the godforsaken LA Times they're going to have to run a correction. The Post hasn't won a Pulitzer for its reporting on Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Jeez.
UPDATE: wanna help me with my reply in the LA Times?
I know an editor at the LA Times who saw my post. He asked me if I wanted to write a Blowback piece (see this example) for the opinion section of the site.
A reply of sorts to Professor Skube.
I am not interested in investigating him, but I am interested in including in my reply 7-10 diverse and interesting examples of blog sites doing original reporting. The kind of thing he wouldn't know about because he didn't check it out before oh-pining.
That is, I am trying to be constructive and informative in my response, which will also be quite critical.
I have three to start off with that I think I will use, two well known, one less so.
1.) Talking Points Memo's pursuit of the US attorney's story this spring and over time.
2.) Firedoglake at the Libby trial March 2007.
3.) Daily Kos community and the Sinclair Broadcasting dossier in October 2004.
I know of others but I welcome your suggestions. The more different they are the better. If you want to be really, truly helpful, word your suggestions in two-three lines starting with a link, like this:
March 2007. Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: Lefty political blog provides the only blow by blow coverage of the trial by splitting the work among six contributors.
Format is...
* Month, year
* Title for the "case" that is also a link to the url that best takes you into it
* One-sentence description of the reporting done written in present tense. ("provides the only" as against "provided the only")
Thanks!