It takes a certain obliviousness to recent history to believe that a liberal blogger is going to go easy on a Democrat. Or to suggest Nico’s a dick. Hell, in the context of the bloggosphere, Nico’s got a lot of work to do if he wants to be considered mildly rude.
Anyway Spencer, don’t worry about yourself; you’ve got commenters.

Then again does anyone know Howie Kurtz’s show exists? Otherwise I would have told Pitney to go all Jon Stewart to Milbank’s Tucker Carlson. That would have been sweet. I now wonder if Greenwald saw the show. Only to see him hammer Milbank later today(or tomorrow).

Nico might have worn hunter orange to this interview, I suppose. That’s the only thing that would have made it cooler.

Although it seemed rather clearly off base, considering the state of American political journalism I was not troubled by the original exploration of the interaction between the white house and Nico in the formulation and actual placement of the question. It didn’t seem well founded or terribly important to me, but you could see how it was fair and not unreasonable to explore.

But here we are, days later, and for Dana Milbank to still be flogging this equine corpse, spewing vitriol and disingenuous contentions, seemingly genuinely angered not just by the events but by the presence of this outsider, this unwashed plebeian who is most certainly NOT a member of his exclusive and rarefied little club seems to be little more than simple fear. The fear the shrinking population of Mastodons might have felt as another tribe of humans set up housekeeping in their habitat.

I don’t think the Post will disappear tomorrow, but in general, the brighter future is for the online contributors and the HuffPo has arguably a brighter upside than does WaPo. Technology and economics has driven radical change in the business of reporting and analyzing events, and those who have gained position, respect and privilege in print and broadcast journalism are not going to yield to the faster, smaller, smarter and cheaper interlopers without spending significant gallons of ink in a desperate, hopeless rear-guard holding action. Kind of sad, equivalent in its way to the record industry suing its best customers because to accept that the status quo was dead was to question their assumed place in the world.

Make no mistake, we’ll see more of this, not less, but the writing is on the screen. Evolution is merciless, and whenever an industry no longer offers value it dies. Sometimes with a great sturm und drang, a clenching of fists and a gnashing of teeth, but there is a certain inevitability in the inevitable…

mikey

Dana Milbank never wins the One Who Fucks Up The Least contest.

Wow, I’ve never seen Dana behave so aggressively. I guess that’s the point. Very territorial behavior there and how stupid for Kurtz to seat them all so close together. All the guests look crammed into a tiny booth at the diner, while Kurtz hogs the other side. No wonder they’re all grouchy.

This does seem “set up”. However, it is a good question, and Obama seemed to want to emphasize the new technology in the press room. That is what ruffled so many feathers. Hilarious.

Then Dana tells on himself by saying, hey, here are my articles where I call out the Bush administration, you want to read them, right here, right now? Kinda geeky. That said, Dana seems like a nice guy…but I don’t want the press to be nice, fgs!

The fact that Froomkin had to particularized his type of writing in his swan song Wapo column as “accountability journalism” kind of says it all. There was a time when most journalism was “accountability journalism”. That was the point of a free press. Now it is, as you say, spectacle.

Oh goodie, someone who agrees with ME! Of course I’m not an MSM star, so I thought it was great that the President recognized Pitney’s yeoman’s work in covering the Iran uprising. The President made it evident during the presser that Pitney had been asked to provide a question (one the President didn’t really answer, BTW, so THAT obviously wasn’t “planted”), & I learned later that Pitney had also published (prior to the presser) more than one post indicating the White House had solicited a question from an Iranian. If there was a “conspiracy,” as Milbank — and many other MSM types — charged, it was the U.S. government & press ganging up on the repressive Irani government. Meddling in Iranian affairs? Oooh, maybe. Who cares?

Anyway, this was not — as Milbank implied in his column — a secret plant of a pseudojournalist of the type the Bush administration employed. It was all upfront.

I think the MSM’s main problem is the underlying fundamental bread-&-butter issue. Pitney was covering the Iran crisis in a way a weekly magazine or a daily newspaper cannot. He was posting up-to-the minute information from unconfirmed & not necessarily even honest sources, though doing his best to weed out the crap. The NYT’s The Lede was doing the same thing. Most readers understand the difference. They expect a WashPost story to be properly sourced & the information to be pretty accurate; but they expect less from what Pitney (& the Lede & Andrew Sullivan, et al.) was doing with the Iran raw material. It’s HARDER to write an MSM article than it is to throw up a video somebody somewhere sent. People who think they’re “real” journalists, & that includes Milbank (who, in theory anyway, has fact-checkers hovering over his work), RESENT the freedom that a blog like Pitney’s Iran stuff allowed. They resent the traffic Pitney was undoubtedly getting. And they resent the fact that their newsrooms are emptying out because people like us read people like Pitney & Ackerman.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com