I took a pass on the imbroglio over Michael Skube’s stunningly uninformed Los Angeles Times column on the shortcomings of bloggers, other than posting a brief comment on Jay Rosen’s PressThink blog. So if you’re unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, I recommend Dan Gillmor’s wrapup, a nice summary with all the links. Skube’s interaction with Josh Marshall is mind-blowing.
Let me repeat what I said on PressThink. There’s only one way to complete the sentence “All blogs are …” And that is this: “All blogs are published on the Internet.” Anything else is an intellectually dishonest generalization.
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Anonymous
I don’t know if we have received the full story yet. But the lion’s share of the blame has to go to LA Times editors and less to the clueless Skube. Just another example of what looks like an impending road to oblivion by the geezers.
Dan Kennedy
I have to disagree. Skube’s editors certainly deserve a rap on the knuckles for suggesting Josh Marshall’s sites as an example of blogs that do no reporting. (Good grief — could they have picked a more unlikely example?) But Skube was writing an opinion column, and his academic and professional credentials were impeccable. Such pieces are lightly edited, at best. Maybe this has exposed something about the trouble with op-ed pages in general, but I don’t think it says anything particularly awful about the LA Times.
Harry
I agree with your required ending to the generalization about blogs, Dan. Does that mean that blogs have reached some level of diversity nirvana, despite what Ellen Goodman says? 🙂