When blogs help… and hurt
: You won’t be surprised to hear that I agree with half of this John Podhoretz column and disagree with the other half. John praises blogs for opening up media — that’s the half with which I disagree — and he uses as evidence of bloggie goodness the Swift Vets story. Of course, I disagree with that. I would hate to think that mudslinging — whether the mud is the Swifties’ snipes or Moore’s or those who went after Bush’s military record — is our proudest moment in this new medium. It’s not. In any case, John as interesting things to say, so I quote:
I’ve been listening to mainstream-media types talk about the terrible threat posed to the news business by one new phenomenon or other since I began my career 22 years ago. The complaint is invariably, and drearily, the same: Whatever is new is bad because it supposedly lowers the historically high standards of the mainstream media.
The last two years in particular have seen the explosion of a new medium
