Welcome Mat(t)

Before we begin, please forgive any dour remarks and prognostications of doom. It's just my dinner settling.

Here I am, another birth into the blogsphere, offering my take on the content of my subhead, on the world, on whathaveyou and fuckall. And in this case, blogs. (How Postmodern--an opening blog about the act of blogging. I feel like Escher. Then again, since these things link up all the time, it's only natural, non?)

The reason this concerns me is because I have been asked to write about the relationship between traditional journalism, particulaly newsprint (at least that's what I'm concerned with), and blogs. The reason this concerns me so is that I will graduate this winter and must go find a job in some farflung newsroom. I cannot help but feel like the Internet has ravaged newsprint in ways not seen since the heyday of Kahn. That's the one from Star Trek--I'm talking about television here. While blogs are probably the smallest part of newsprint's current woes, they no doubt contribute.

To suggest, then, that journalists have anything to learn from bloggers is insulting. Poynter columnist Steve Outing instead makes a good argument for me to take my journalism education, find a decent-paying desk job and just blog all day. The biggest problems facing print journos these days is there credibility. Bloggers, argues Outing with the support of the cyberfamous Wonkette, ne Ana Marie Cox, can publish whatever they want and leave it up to their readers to fact check. "It's fine in a democratic society for people to receive most any information," Outing writes of Cox's approach to blogging, adding that so long as the source is clarified, and its questionable nature made clear, the public will support their decision and wait for more. Where I am at a loss is how the most reputable and well-read blogs manage to read all their comments and reply in kind while a paper can't. Or maybe I'm just wondering why newspapers can't be more forgiving.

Maybe because Outing is right when he writes, "newspaper corrections typically are relegated to an inside page in a special corrections area, unseen by many readers." The way I've written thus far has at times placed newspapers on a pedestal. From Blair to Plamegate, no wonder "citizen journalists" don't believe they can do it if not better than at least just as good. Outing suggests bloggers could stand to learn a few things from journalists, such as doing real reporting and having someone edit their work. But isn't this counter to the whole spirit of blogging. The more I think about it, maybe Wonkette is right. The checks and balances of the newsroom work no better than those of our federal government. As former technology reporter Dan Gilmour told Quill magazine, "Readers collectively know more than we journalist can possibly know, and they are a great sources for us." So why should bloggers go mudding up the works by becoming proper journalists. Where would they be without the Times? Probably out on the street, figuratively, or literally, doing my job. Let them stick to their cubicles. Then, maybe I'll be left with some bread on my table once the year's through.