Play the New Media Game: Journalist Outranks Blogger. Blogger Trumps Guy Posting on Blog. Guy Posting on Blog Ticks Off Journalist.

So there are journalists.  They can run the gamut from Judith Miller to Sy Hersh.  They are Bill Moyers and Bobbleheads like Chris Matthews and vampires like Bob Novak.  Some are in school.  Some come to journalism from other professions like Yasser Salihee, who was recently shot and killed by an American sniper at a checkpoint in Iraq.  In America, nearly all journalists are owned by corporations that have a vested interest in the political status quo.

Then there are bloggers. Few are owned outright, but who knows where they fit in?  Now, thanks to journalist, Matt Bai, we can start separating some bloggy wheat from the chaff.  He likes fellow authors Kos and Jerome, you see, but, well, we ain't all Kos:

I think there's a lot of really valuable criticism that gets done on the blogs. After I talk to you, I'm gonna go see Markos from Daily Kos and Jerome from My DD to talk to them about our respective book projects, and I think they have a lot to offer to the debate. ... Sometimes the difference between a blogger and what some guy posting on a blog will write is huge. That's why I say I think there's a lot of good being done online, but I also think people need to take responsibility for what they write and the quality of their thought online.

Looks like we need another panel on blogging ethics, as Atrios likes to say. But there's more.  For fun, guess what has Bai crying for accountability.  Which reporter was so wronged by the guys posting on blogs that the outrage will not stand?

Some of the stuff that was said about my colleague Adam Nagourney on the blogs during the last campaign was disgusting and destructive.

Nagourney the Noble.  Nagourney the Mindreader.  Adam "Some Dems Say" Nagourney.  Nagourney the Nearly Never Right.  Nagourney the Worried.  That's the Adam Nagourney he's talking about.  Click on the link or search around Reading A1 to see why that's so amusing.
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Comments

[Elayne Riggs]

I think there's a difference between being "owned by a corporation" and being paid by one. I have a great deal of respect for professional journalists, even if some of them are slimeballs (the same percentage, I'd warrant, as in most professions). Bloggers aren't journalists, unless they were journalists before they started blogging. Bloggers are writers - some good, some bad. Bloggers are mostly around to talk to each other and build community, not to break news stories and investigate what's going on in the real world. If more value were put into active citizenship and community solidarity, and less into establishment legitimacy and profit, you wouldn't have all these "A-list" bloggers whining that they ought to be viewed as journalists.

[eRobin]

HI Elayne :)

I think there's a difference between being "owned by a corporation" and being paid by one.

I don't. I think there are corps that let some of them do their jobs though.

If more value were put into active citizenship and community solidarity,

Boy, do I agree with that. If more value were put into active citizenship and community solidarity, this country would be a better place.

I think bloggers exist for the reasons you say and to push stories that the corporate media wants buried.