The Pajama Game
The Pajama Game
It's hard to know who to root against in the bloggers vs. CNN controversy that led to the resignation of CNN's Eason Jordan, a twenty-three-year veteran of the network. Right-wing bloggers speak of themselves as having replaced the mainstream media. And while it is impossible to generalize about the global blog phenomenon (indeed, in May 2002 I started an edited MSNBC weblog, http://www.altercation.msnbc.com/), one thing you can say about bloggers is that they are not professional journalists--unless, of course, they also happen to be professional journalists.
This is both a good and a bad thing. The MSM operate with countless blinders, and plenty of people with specialized knowledge enjoy the capacity to invigorate the MSM's frequently brain-dead discourse. The analysis of US Middle East policy one finds on Juan Cole's blog is consistently superior to what usually appears in the MSM; ditto Brad DeLong on economic policy. The blog Left2Right offers a host of intelligent contributions from the world of academic philosophers. The list goes on and on.
Sometimes a fresh eye and a willingness to hammer away at the same topic from different angles can also be salutary. Dozens of journalists heard then-Senate majority leader Trent Lott celebrate legalized segregation, but it took journalist Joshua Micah Marshall and economist Duncan Black, a k a Atrios, to force them to recognize the racism of his remarks.
font link http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050314/alterman
about the author Eric Alterman
Termed "the most honest and incisive media critic writing today” in the National Catholic Reporter, and author of “the smartest and funniest political journal out there,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Eric Alterman is Professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, media columnist for The Nation, the “Altercation” weblogger for MSNBC.com (http://www.altercation.msnbc.com/), and a senor fellow at the Center for American Progress, for whose journal he writes and edits the “Think Again” column. Alterman is the author of the national bestsellers, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003,2004), and The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (with Mark Green, February 2004). His newest book is When Presidents Lie: A History of Deception and its Consequences (September, 2004). His Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992, 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award, and his It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999, 2001), won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award. Alterman is also the author of Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy, (1998). A frequent lecturer and a contributor to virtually every significant national publication in the United States and many in Europe, in recent years, he has also been a columnist for: Worth, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and The Sunday Express (London). A senior fellow of the World Policy Institute at New School University, and former Adjunct Professor of Journalism at NYU and Columbia, Alterman received his BA in History and Government from Cornell, his M.A. in International Relations from Yale, and his PhD in US History from Stanford. He lives with his family in Manhattan, where he is at work on a history of postwar American liberalism.
