They can't even win their own arguments

Start here or if you want to just jump right into the idiocy, go here. The op-ed in the LA Times by Skube is yet another grenade lobbed by the Corporate Media^TM at the blogging community. Unfortunately, for them, it bounces off... something... and lands at their own feet, but luckily, for them, they were too stupid to even pull the pin.

So, we start at the beginning:

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The late Christopher Lasch once wrote that public affairs generally and journalism in particular suffered not from too little information but from entirely too much. What was needed, he argued, was robust debate.

Ok, let's ignore the little/much information problem and concentrate on debate:

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The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined.

I would call that debate. So, already in the first two paragraphs Skube has contradicted his own argument. Journalism is really all about promoting debate and blogs are nothing more than debate. If both of those are true then blogs are a vital, in fact, the most vital part, of the media today. Well done sir. Moving on.

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And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side. "No man but a blockhead," the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said, "ever wrote but for money." Yet here are people, whole brigades of them, happy to write for free.

Unless you whore yourself you can not be a Very Serious Person^TM. Awesome argument. Next.

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Some [bloggers] reject the label "journalist," associating it with what they contemptuously call MSM (mainstream media); just as many, if not more, consider themselves a new kind of "citizen journalist" dedicated to broader democratization.

Is "citizen journalist" supposed to be an insult? Is broader democratization bad? Enquiring minds want to know. Next.

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To the contrary, he [Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos wrote, "we are representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we're selling."

Are you scared?

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There is at least some reason for activists like Moulitsas to see themselves as the new wave. Last year, the California 6th District Court of Appeal gave bloggers the legal victory they wanted when it ruled that they were protected under the state's reporter shield law. Other, more symbolic victories have come their way too. In 2004, bloggers were awarded press credentials to the Democratic National Convention. And earlier this month in Chicago, at a convention sponsored by Daily Kos, a procession of Democratic presidential hopefuls offered full salutes, knowing that bloggers are busy little bees in organizing political support and fundraising.

Oh, yes, you are scared. Boo! Next.

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"What democracy requires," Lasch wrote in "The Lost Art of Argument," "is vigorous public debate, not information. Of course, it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can only be generated by debate. We do not know what we need until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy."

I love it. So, according to the quote Skube supplies democracy requires debate prompted by the information provided by journalists. No shit Sherlock. Bloggers are saying that you Very Serious Journalists^TM aren't asking the right questions, or in most cases, any questions. you are absolutely right. Next.

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He [1960's NY Times reporter Claude Sitton] recounted the time in Philadelphia, Miss., when "a few rednecks -- drunk, shotguns in the back of their truck -- showed up at the Holiday Inn where Fleming and I were staying." The locals invited the big-city reporters -- Sitton from the Times, Fleming from Newsweek -- to come out and see the farm. "I told 'em, 'Look, you shoot us and there'll be a dozen more just like us in the morning. You going to shoot them too?' "

So, serious journalism is measured by how many death threats you get? Well then, shit, liberal bloggers are super journalists. See this earlier post about Ava, a 16 year blogger in Alabama. 'Nuff said. Next and finally.

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n our time, the Washington Post's reporting, in late 2005, of the CIA's secret overseas prisons and its painstaking reports this year on problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- both of which won Pulitzer Prizes -- were not exercises in armchair commentary.

Nor, apparently, are these exercises in Very Serious Reporting^TM and this really invalidates EVERYTHING he said previously about serious journalism. The Walter Reed stories did not win a Pulitzer in 2005... or ever. Wasn't even freaking nominated! I...I...I don't even know what to say.


Muhahahah! Wait, this op-ed is a plant, right? This is really some blogger pulling the wool over our eyes, right? Some blogger intentionally making the Corporate Media^TM look like stupid jackasses, right? No, really, ok. Well, good job anyway.

You know, maybe I just don't understand Skube's rapier wit and superior logic, after all, I'm just a stupid blogger, a "citizen journalist", one of the unclean masses. Or maybe I could write for the LA Times on my fucking coffee break. Just saying, Corporate Media^TM, if you want a fight at least stop punching yourselves in the face. Otherwise, we're just going to get bored, wander off and take your girl/boy.