"Fear and Loathing" -- The MSM looks at Bloggers

Oh my! "Fear"? "Loathing"?

Let's get real here.

The headline is sensational -- the body of the article is actually rather commonsensical.

Dante Chinni, writing in US Today, reports on journalistic hysteria:

Mainstream journalism is running scared. It's watching its audience numbers decline and its public trust numbers drop. Newspapers, magazines, and network television news have been shaken by major scandals. The media have seen the future and it is blogging.

....
Many believe blogs are a dangerous direct competitor to mainstream journalism - a way for individuals and interest groups to reach around the gatekeeper function that newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio have traditionally held. Some even see them as the future of journalism; an army of citizen journalists bringing the unfiltered news to a public hungry for the inside dope.

Chinni then goes on to deflate the explosion of hyperbole. He notes that bloggers just don't command the resources necessary to compete with regular news outlets at the national level, and that is where money is to be made. Bloggers, he argues, will either attract miniscule audiences, or will be dependent on the MSM for information. He concludes:

For all the fretting, blogging ultimately is bound to be less a replacement for the traditional media than a complement. The fact is, journalism's most critical responsibilities in a democratic society - seeking, reporting, and analyzing news and holding people accountable - aren't easy to fulfill.

People rightly point out that the media often fail at those tasks. It's just hard to see how making it a volunteer position or a part-time job could improve the situation.

He's right, you know. Bloggers are either specialized into esoteric niches or are parasitic on the MSM. Where do you suppose the stories we write about come from?

Bloggers can build on the reporting done by the MSM. They can correct, expand, and deepen the national dialogue. That is, I would argue, a valuable contribution to our democratic society. If it inspires "fear" and "loathing" -- if the MSM cannot tolerate criticism -- then that says a lot, none of it complimentary, about the denizens of the newsrooms.