As I noted in recent weeks, the Boston Globe's tough coverage of Senator Kerry stands out to someone following South Dakota political reporting, which often gives Senator Daschle a pass. David Adesnik at OxBlog hosted a conference last week which included that BG reporter and noted this about bloggers and the press:
The question I was left asking myself after the debate was what questions I might have asked if I had been in the audience but hadn't been a blogger. Probably exactly the same ones that the actual audience asked. They were intelligent. They solicited important information from the guest. But from the perspective of a blogger-slash-backseat journalist, they seemed so elementary. And that made me realize just how much I had learned by spending a couple of hours a day on this website for the last eighteen monthsIt also made me realize how specialized and pedantic bloggers' media criticism is. Even the most intelligent "normal" people out there have only the vaguest sense of how bloggers read the newspaper. Much like scholars, bloggers tend to think of their analytical methods as being a secret treasure, while critics think of them as the product of some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Yet in contrast to scholars, bloggers are rapidly winning bigger and bigger audiences.
I hope so. And I hope that the journalist/readers of the Dakota Blog Alliance know that we simply want fair coverage. There's no secret to this "analytical method." Just fairness and balance, which hasn't been in evidence yet, and needs to be lest this crown jewel of Senate races be corrupted by poor media coverage. But I agree with David, I've learned a lot too. Sometimes I wish I didn't know how bad the media coverage of this race is, but we're keeping hope alive that matters will improve.
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