Blogs reshape politics, news reports

But sometimes embarrassing mistakes flow from authors' desire to say it first

http://www.cleveland.com/open/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/114949624964930.xml&coll=2

Monday, June 05, 2006

Mark Naymik
Plain Dealer Politics Writer


..."You heard it here first," buckeyestateblog.com declared in the wee hours one March night. "Blackwell to drop out."

Six weeks later, Ken Blackwell crushed Jim Petro in the GOP gubernatorial primary...

Among the most prolific Ohio bloggers is buckeyestateblog's Russell Hughlock, a British subject and engineer who lives in Newark. More than just a commentator, he covers rallies and grass-roots meetings on his own time and dime.

Hughlock, a former campaign consultant for the British Conservative Party and a founding member of the Licking County Pro Active Citizens, describes his political leanings as "economically conservative, socially progressive/libertarian."...


http://www.cleveland.com/open/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/114949625864930.xml&coll=2

...Net worth: Ohio's most influential political blogger, aggressively attacking all Republicans and some Democrats -- particularly U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown -- who don't measure up to his progressive standards (Sherrod Brown doesn't live up to a British conservative/libertarian's progressive standards?)...



Tim Russo

Web site: Democracyguy.com

...trying to rebuild credibility lost when he was convicted of importuning in an Internet sex sting...

As someone who's been in the journalism business a while, it ticks me off to see people equate blogs with news stories. They aren't. Anyone can be a blogger these days. Bloggers don't use the same standards in writing blogs that reporters do with news stories. There's not the fact checking you find in news stories. There's bias in blogs. So the two aren't equal and never will be.

did a lot of "fact checking" on those lies about WMDs - and there was NO "bias" in their gung-ho war build-up reporting.

The article mentions that a blogger incorrectly predicted that Blackwell would drop out of the Ohio gubernatorial race. But it says nothing about the mistakes and propagandizing that the mainstream media have been making. I consider THAT bias! And the MSM would be far better off trying to figure out what people are getting from blogs what they are no longer supplying.

But there's no question that tensions between the MSM and the netrooters is escalating. As Peter Daou points out:



:headbang:
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