Katiie’s Beer

Atomizer of Fraters Libertas posts Good Lovin’ Gone Bad on journalist Kathleen Parker’s love-hate-loathing relationship with the blogosphere. He writes:

Just what is it about us bloggers that has the mainstream media practically wetting their underpants in recent days? When even syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, a self-described fan of blogging since at least 2003, has turned on us, you know something has gone terribly wrong. Read his post…

That Ms. Parker has gone to such great lengths (ie. writing an article, Lord of the Blogs, about how she detests bloggers, comparing them to Lord of the Flies children abandoned by adults) tells me that she isn’t completely discrediting the blogosphere. She writes:

We can’t silence them, but for civilization’s sake - and the integrity of information by which we all live or die - we can and should ignore them.

I can’t believe a respected journalist writing such an irresponsible thing. I suppose she writes out of frustration, along with other journalists, newspaper editors and even radio station managers, that people have traveled up that big mountain of “crediblity” formerly reserved for credentialed media professionals. We’ve seen the top of their mountain and we’ve got a look at the beautiful valley on the other side of their mountain top. In that valley, citizens are free to decide for themselves which stories they wish to read and share, which professional journalists to depend on for honest reporting and, on a very lucky day, which stories to break. We don’t want to get rid of professional journalists, just the ones who seem to obsess about bloggers.

Be sure to read her article at Townhall.com and the excellent comments following the article.

Tags: Blog-keeping, mainstream media //