And the lion and the lamb shall report together
: Jay Rosen has a great post about a blogger who watches the LA Times for any sign, any smell, any confirmation of liberal bias and who gets utterly gobsmacked when the Times listens to him.
The Times reported on a no-no by conservative Supreme Court Justice Scalia; Patterico was incensed that they did not report the exactly comparable no-no from liberal Justice Ginsberg. He wrote about it on his blog and wrote to the Times and snidely, cynically assumed — as gospel — that the Times would never write the equivalent story about Ginsberg.
Well, as Gomer used to say: Surprise, surprise, surprise! Look what happened:
The reporters contacted Patterico and wrote the story and it, too, played on Page 1.
Jay sees this, rightly, as a powerful example of the new, two-way relationship in news media.
Now it so happens that only a few hours before, in two separate posts, I had written about how blogging has made me discover that new, two-way relationship between poster or publisher and public. (And that’s why Jay and I became such fast friends and colleagues in blogging; from the first moment we met only, we happened to be thinking and writing about the same things; strange digital kismet; the real social software.)
And the point is, it truly is possible to create a new relationship between big media and the public once both sides listen and respect each other, once it truly becomes two-way.
Go read Jay’s whole post because it’s a compelling tale and an important view — a revolutionary view — of journalism. To Jay, the real journalism going on here was the blogger’s, the citizen’s.
And the real hope is that both sides learn to respect each other more and listen to each other more and not be so cynical about each other. (That’s what I was trying to say yesterday when I talked about getting big and little media together in a bar to learn that, yes, everybody is trying hard to do the right thing.)
The press can’t do this alone, without the journalism and dogging of the citizens. The citizens can’t do it alone without the resources and dogging of the press. Together, they — we — can do important things for society.
See the dawn of a new age of journalism at Pressthink.
: Paterico leaves a comment complaining that I was harsh in my tone by calling him cynical and thus implied that he had no cause to be cynical. I apologize and want to make that clear. This is what I said in response to his comment:
I did not mean to say that there was not cause for cynicism; what I mean to say is that the only way to CURE that cynicism is to do EXACTLY what Patterico did and EXACTLY what the LA Times did in response. This is a success story; that’s Jay’s point so well stated.
And we need more such success stories.
