Kurtz on Bloggery

Howard Kurtz has a piece in tomorrow's WaPo that discusses the impact blogs have had on mainstream journalism. It appears that he is not altogether happy about the way things are going. He quotes the usual blog mouthpieces -- Jeff Jarvis, Glenn Reynolds, Hugh Hewitt, and a few more, and then wonders:

Is the rise of crusading bloggers a healthy development, as many media analysts maintain, or the creation of a new Wild West with no rules or responsibilities? Hours after Jordan stepped down, Steve Lovelady of Columbia Journalism Review e-mailed his verdict to New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail."

Read the whole thing here.

All in all, I think the answer to Kurtz' question is both. To the extent that bloggery democratizes the flow of information and breaks down a system that tries to manage what people know and are allowed to think it is decidedly healthy. That does not mean that there aren't some irresponsible headhunters and salivating morons out there who delight in tearing down established institutions and savaging the people who staff them. But don't lose sight of the fact that there is an awful lot of responsible and informed criticism on the net too. And, lets face it, the institutions of the main stream media have not exactly covered themselves in glory. Democracy is a messy business and a lot of what goes on is distasteful, but we should not allow the excesses of the fringies to blind us to the fact that ultimately in a democratic system, people should have access to as wide a range of opinion and information as they want without having to go through gatekeepers who, as experience shows, cannot be trusted to decide for them.

UPDATE:

Scrappleface offers his own take on the whole mess: Read it here. As always there's an element of truth in his humor -- a lot of people in the blogosphere are eagerly anticipating the next takedown.