Media Cluelessness

Josh Marshall digs up an amazing story. Michael Skube, a journalism professor, mind you, wrote a 1,200-word op-ed in the LA Times about how blogging is insufficient compared to real journalism, because real journalism requires original reporting. Remember that bit during what follows:

Now, fair enough. There's certainly no end of blog pontificating fueled by puffed-up self-assertion rather than facts. But Skube's piece reads with a vagueness that suggests he has less than a passing familiarity with the topic at issue. And I will confess to you that what really caught my attention was that in a column bewailing how blogs don't do any real reporting one of the four bloggers he mentioned was me.

Now, whether we do any quality reporting at TPM is a matter of opinion. And everyone is entitled to theirs. So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he was including us as examples in a column about the dearth of original reporting in the blogosphere.

Now, I get criticized plenty. And that's fair since I do plenty of criticizing. And I wouldn't raise any of this here if it weren't for what came up in Skube's response.

Not long after I wrote I got a reply: "I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site. So to that extent I'm happy to give you benefit of the doubt ..."

This seemed more than a little odd since, as I said, he certainly does use me as an example -- along with Sullivan, Matt Yglesias and Kos. So I followed up noting my surprise that he didn't seem to remember what he'd written in his own opinion column on the very day it appeared and that in any case it cut against his credibility somewhat that he wrote about sites he admits he'd never read.

To which I got this response: "I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ... "

And this is from someone who teaches journalism?

So Michael Skube, who teaches students how to be journalists, didn't have any examples of blogs for his column on how blogs suck, so he outsourced the naming of actual sites to his editor, who promptly included two people who are on staff at national magazines, and one journalist whose site is the best example of original reporting in the entire blogosphere. And Skube is happy to admit that he doesn't read any of them.

And media types wonder why people hate the media.

Right-wingers are media triumphalists; Left-wingers simply want the media to do their jobs better. That includes actually having a familiarity with the subject about which you're writing. Steve Benen is right, this is a slippery slope, how many other facts are casually slipped in by editors without anybody really bothering to check their accuracy? How many other reporters are writing blindly about their topics?

In truth, Skube is a worried old man who's been at this shtick for two years. He doesn't read blogs, and he's mainly just concerned about the existence of blogs. He's a part of the past, and the traditional media will only thrive by looking to the future. And to do that, first let's kill all the J-schools, to borrow a Shakesperean phrase, and let's get some experts in journalism who actually know what they're writing about.