Although the piece does contain a number of valuable insights, Franke-Ruta's ideological bias seems to have blinded her to important parts of the Eason Jordan narrative.

There are dozens of mini-blogstorms generated every month, the vast majority of which never make it to the corporate mainstream media (CMM). Franke-Ruta does not examine how these two stories make the big jump from the ideological "ghettos" of blogdom to the CMM.

In the Gannon/Guckert case, there was a legitimate story that was ignored by the CMM until the disclosure that Guckert had been a gay prostitute. To those of us following the story, the "gay prostitute" angle merely intensified the mystery surrounding "Gannon"---the question of how "Gannon" got credentialed without any background in journalism gained another element--how did he get credentialed with a criminal background? To most the CMM, however, it was all about "sex", and "invasion of privacy."

In the Eason Jordan case, we were looking at a non-story that was obviously about to jump into the CMM for no "good" reason. Franke-Ruta's chronology leaves out a key element in the narrative that explains why this was about to occur---the involvement, at the behest of Hugh Hewitt, of Jay Rosen of PressThink in the Jordan story. Rosen's obsessive coverage of the Jordan non-story clearly legitimized the story in the eyes of the CMM, because Rosen is considered part of the non-partisan academic blogging elite, and has a relatively small but highly influential audience within journalism circles.

It was one thing for the far-right to be asking questions about Jordan's supposedly bias---its an entirely different thing when legitimate journalists who read PressThink started calling him up with questions. Jordan knew, better than anyone, of the cable news network's reliance on contrived controversies to fill air time, and how the far-right can keep non-stories alive through the cable news networks.

Franke-Ruta's failure to note Rosen's involvement makes it appear that the right-wing blog-stormtroopers have immediate access to the CMM. They don't---they need the aid of "respectable" bloggers like Rosen (and Kurtz and Kaus) to legitimize these stories for them.

I'm in the rather unusual position here of being a print journalist who continues to operate under the usual norms of the print journalism community. I was taught early on that it's defensive and unseemly to to get into any kind of public back and forth with the people in your stories. Especially when writing about people in politics, as such individuals will often cry foul if and when you reveal things they wish to keep hidden.

That said, having been encouraged by Micah Sifry to join PDF at the IPDI conference in Washington we've been attending, I thought I'd give this site a whirl and post here in the spirit of bloggy dialogue. After all, I, too, am blogging these days (over at The American Prospect's Tapped), as well as reporting and writing stories.

To start with, one thing I'd hate to see people at this site give up, as Micah does above, perhaps under the name of democratic openess, is a sytem wherein "off the record" generally means "off the record." Which is to say: not something subject to any kind of characterization. Similarly, it will be a real shame if proponents of the new media lose their journalistic skepticism toward the way sources try to spin stories, just because new media folk believe too many MSM journalists have fallen victim to that spin.

I've responded to Krempasky here: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005663. I quoted him correctly but not as he wished; he misquoted himself on his own site, and has since removed the quote marks from what it is he claimed to have said.

Also, one of the problems with blogs is that people write on them very quickly and not always that clearly. Combined with a lack of editing (or even copy-editing), that means that sometimes people write badly, or in a kind of insidery shorthand. Krempasky said, on this site, that he "happily added the category, 'The Dark Side'" to his post. Apparently, what he really meant was, "added [a link to] the [pre-existing] category [that Micah created] the Dark Side" to his post. Not having been one of the creators of this site or among its 600 or so (as per Micah) daily readers, I erred by reading the phrase "added the category" according to standard English meanings, thinking it meant "added an additional category."

Does this kind of back and forth about such small matters seem a bit Talmudic to you? Or does it seem useful? Those are real questions. And, more importantly: Does this kind of back and forth advance the cause of democracy, the ostensible purpose of this site?

Garance--

I'm very glad that you've taken me up on my suggestion that you comment here.

You make two very good points. On reflection, I should have erred on the side of caution and not posted anything characterizing our conversation. But I actually thought what I wrote was fairly innocuous and generally favorable, and I wanted to give you some credit for being willing to respond quickly to a minor mistake. I also now see that online journalists also need to remember that some of our jargon (i.e. "categories" as tags for blog posts) aren't immediately obvious to new readers.

I'm also glad to see that you, and the editors of the Prospect, have decided to use TAPPED, the Prospect's blog, to respond to some of the many responses your original article has stirred in the blogosphere.

That said, let me humbly suggest that it's time to recognize that the distinctions between bloggers and journalists are blurring, and that we are all now swimming in the same expanding pool. Welcome to the conversation.

Consider that at least 20 bloggers, some with fairly large audiences, have already linked to your article "Blogged Down," and perhaps another 100 or so are talking about your article without making that link (based on using Technorati to search on your article's url and your name). And you don't need to be a member of the technorati to stumble on what people are saying in response to your piece. A Google search on your name brings up a couple of responses to your article on the first results page.

Under the old rules of print journalism, the main (if not only) way for the reader to respond to an article was to mail a letter to the editor and hope that the editor(s) deemed it worthy of publication. Now some readers may still yearn to see their letters in print (in the May issue of the Prospect, say), but most have discovered a faster, more satisfying and ultimately more democratic forum by posting on their own blogs (or on others) online.

And the Prospect is part of that world. It's not "defensive or unseemly" to get into a back and forth with the people you write about. It's just the new reality. Whether you like it or not, they are getting into a back and forth with you, and every other journalist and public figure. Best to jump in and join the conversation, I think.