I don't know why this kind of thing amazes me these days but it does. A Journalism professor named Michael Skube wrote this column for the L.A. Times. The content of the column is pretty well summarized by its subtitle: "The hard-line opinions on weblogs are no substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters."
Fair enough…and more than a little obvious. I don't know anyone who thinks weblogs are a substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters. Some of us think that they're an important adjunct, and also that not enough reporters are doing that patient fact-finding these days. But a substitute? That sounds like Straw Man territory to me. Anyway, in his piece, Skube mentions several bloggers who don't do any real reporting and one of those names is that of Josh Marshall, whose Talking Points Memo website certainly does a fair amount of reporting and has even broken a number of stories that newspaper and TV reporters later picked up on. (Two examples of many: It was Marshall's site that first flagged Trent Lott's infamous remarks at Strom Thurmond's birthday party…remarks that soon cost Lott his post as Senate Minority Leader. And Marshall's site was reporting on the "outing" of Valerie Plame long before any of the mainstream press.)
So why did Skube cite Marshall as a blogger who didn't do reporting? Answer: He didn't. Skube says he hadn't visited Marshall's site when he wrote the article. Skube's editor, he says, stuck the name in there because he thought the piece needed more examples.
Isn't that kind of shoddy Journalism? The characterization of Marshall is offered as Skube's opinion…but he really didn't have that opinion. He was unfamiliar with Marshall's work and so accepts no responsibility for that opinion the way a blogger must accept reponsibility for what's on his blog. His editor decided the article didn't have sufficient examples (i.e., Skube had not done sufficient research for a piece complaining about others not doing sufficient research) so he added Marshall in as an example of Skube's thesis. And then Mr. Skube did not do the rather simple bit of reporting that it would have taken to log into Josh Marshall's website and see if it really was an example.
You can read Josh Marshall's summary of the whole story here.