No Runny Eggs

Today’s Journal Sentinel finally highlights Fred’s instrumental role in the resignation of former Racine County Democrat Party Chair Kurt Vlach, but it still manages to miss the target. Let’s take this 2-paragraph extract as an example:

He used unnamed sources. He posted lewd photos. He let his opinion be known about what he believed was the unethical and unprincipled behavior of the Racine County Democratic Party chairman.

He used tools that most mainstream media steer away from, but that bloggers are now using with gusto.

Let’s take the C^BS-led attempt to unseat President Bush in 2004. They used unnamed sources. They created false documents and presented them as legitimate. They let their opinions be known about what they believe to be the true enemy of America. I guess that “tools” sentence should undergo a ReWrite™ – He used tools that most mainstream left stream media steer away from unless targeting either Republicans or conservatives, but that bloggers are now using with gusto.

Similarily, the Journtinel decided to highlight only a portion of a quote from Steve Outing, a columnist with Editor and Publisher and himself a blogger, to make his words fit their anti-blogger agenda. Here is the full quote, with the part you missed if you didn’t read the whole story emphasized – “”Bloggers don’t have to operate by the same rules and can publish stuff that professional journalists say is just gossip. Later, what was dismissed as gossip really did turn out to be a legitimate story.” Oh, where did we see this before? It was Matt Drudge’s exposing of Newsweek‘s decision to spike the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinski story.

Despite the anti-blogger bias I highlighted, the article is a good read. We “barbarians” are already beyond the gates. Not all of us may break stories like Fred, but we’ll hold everybody’s feet to the fire.