more on New FactCheck.org Document: Update: CBS retracts documents

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: David Akin <david () davidakin com>
Date: September 20, 2004 9:21:03 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] New FactCheck.org Document: Update: CBS retracts 
documents


> > From: <SubscriberServices () FactCheck org>
> > Date: September 20, 2004 12:44:34 PM PDT
> > To: <pls () well com>
> > Subject: New FactCheck.org Document: Update: CBS retracts documents
> >
> > Update: CBS retracts documents

> > ---snipped---

> > these documents. Fascinating as the CBS Memo saga has become, it is 
> > now a story primarily about the news media and not the presidential 
> > campaign which is our primary focus.

And that story -- about the news media -- might be just as important to 
democracy in America as the presidential race.

The blogosphere, right now, is hot with talk about  this whole thing 
and some are heralding it as a watershed moment in blog-based 
journalism. I'm not so sure it's such a watershed moment for blog-based 
journalism and neither is Jesse Walker, managing editor of Reason 
Online. In fact, he writes that it might be a watershed moment for Big 
Traditional Media, when it (with the notable exception of CBS) finally 
moved with the same speed as blogger-journos:

Walker writes:
"The new outlets aren't displacing the old ones; they're transforming 
them. Slowly but noticeably, the old media are becoming faster, more 
transparent, more interactive—not because they want to be, but because 
they have to be. Competition is quickening the news cycle whether or 
not anyone wants to speed it up. Critics are examining how reporters do 
their jobs whether or not their prying eyes are welcome. And if a 
network or a newspaper doesn't respond to those criticisms—if it 
doesn't make itself more interactive—then its credibility takes a blow"

Walker continues:
"...mainstream reporters ... are gradually getting locked into an 
uneasy partnership with their amateur cousins online. It's not a 
voluntary relationship, and there are news professionals out there who 
will deny until their dying breath that it exists. It's more like the 
partnership between Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones. 
But it's real."

[Walker's full column is at: 
http://www.reason.com/links/links091504.shtml]





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David Akin
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