Partisan Blogging Part Deux

Watching journalism’s every move

Some bloggers have become independent journalists, but many others are using their growing influence to attack the media.

A story in Thursday’s edition of The New York Times (reg req) discusses the tension between bloggers and journalists in relation to the presidential election. According to the story, hordes of partisan bloggers are attacking the traditional media for the biases and inaccuracies they say are commonplace in mainstream news stories. These independent Internet writers say they can serve as a check on the power of journalists, providing an alternative voice. "The traditional players, including the press, have lost some of the control or exclusive control they used to have," Jay Rosen, chairman of NYU’s journalism department and a blogger, told the newspaper.

The traditional players also have lost some of their prestige, thanks to constant attacks from widely read blogs, some of which urge their readers to call and send emails to reporters of criticized articles, according to the Times, which is no stranger to politically motivated attacks. Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek, is a favorite target for the people behind liberal-leaning Web site DailyKos. The site recently called Fineman a "slime" and said he "loves the G.O.P. and hates gays just like all of the press."

"Most of us now realize that this is a constant conversation, and I think that largely that part of it is good," Fineman told the newspaper. "Some of the stuff includes very personal and nasty things about people - they go after people's physical characteristics, they'll say somebody's ugly - and you just have to ignore that." But he added: "I would be lying if I didn't say it could be hurtful.”

This story didn’t give too many details about the readership of political blogs or an idea of how much influence bloggers carry, but I know several people who get the vast majority of their news from popular blogs such as instapundit.com or the aforementioned Daily Kos, two sites with strong agendas. That’s fine; it’s just like reading columns or news analyses, but it you’re not balancing that with straight news or different opinions you could wind up regurgitating some else’s ideas.