While the editorial gives short shrift to the larger implications of the Gucker scandal, it's still the Chicago Trib and helps the publicity on this issue. Also, it restates the facts pretty well, which helps feed the story. And it actually praises bloggers.
It's ironic that the editorials are starting to pile in when we couldn't even get the mainstream media to cover the NEWS aspect of this story. Then the editorials basically take our side, or at least praise us.
Mainstream media needs therapy.
In the former category are the Internet bloggers, cable television news shows and talk radio, all of whom traffic in clear, often loudly expressed opinion that frames everything they report. They're doing "opinion news--news that reflects one's own beliefs and preferences and tends to filter out dissenting views," as a recent report from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press put it.
Is that new? Nah. It's actually as old as the republic, when newspapers from front to back were clearly identified with a political philosophy and a Thomas Paine could rally Americans to embrace independence by distributing "Common Sense" far and wide....
The bloggers have scored some impressive scoops in recent months. They're a force. According to a Pew Research Center poll, "more people are turning away from traditional news outlets, with their decorous, just-the-facts aspirations to objectivity, toward noisier hybrid formats that aggressively fuse news with opinion or entertainment or both."
