There's no crying in politics

Posted at 9:11 AM on January 9, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Last week's food fight between consultant Blois Olson and Minnesota Democrats Exposed renewed the debate over the role of blogs in political coverage and in the dissemination of information in general. In short, it spawned a whole new round of "mainstream media is dead" articles and columns.

When you talk to someone about this concept, you hear over and over again one example: Powerline's exposing of Dan Rather. Folks, that was a year ago -- a lifetime in mainstream media -- and the blogosphere is going to have to do more than crank out a great story once every 12 months or so.

But in the drumbeat -- mostly in blogs -- of the death of mainstream media, a key point is missing. Even the bloggers don't really believe it. Why? Take MDE for example. Throughout last week -- one of the more strident weeks even by blogging standards -- MDE constantly cited mainstream media coverage of the spat as validation, and the vast majority of links are usually to mainstream media. Huh?

Secondly, if the political blogosphere is going to be nothing more than partisan hacking -- about as informative as a piece of campaign literature -- it's illogical to think it can change anyone's mind.
Do a lot of Democrats really visit Red State? Do a lot of Republicans really visit Daily Kos?

Perhaps what is most threatened in mainstream media isn't its bread-and-butter (coverage), but its editorial pages. Perhaps what is most threatened isn't mainstream media per se, it's civil discourse and intelligent exchanges of ideas.

On Saturday, the guy who writes the Blog House column in the Star Tribune had it right when he said "blogs should strive to be something more. The mainstream media get rapped on the knuckles a lot, and rightly so. This new forum for investigative journalism and political discourse should be utilized for those purposes, rather than partisan hatchet jobs."

Blogging is a medium still in its infancy. But that doesn't mean it can't grow up... just a bit.

Wouldn't this be a great day to start?

Comments (1)

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Posted by home loans | April 20, 2006 7:04 PM

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