From the Poynter Institute's Web site:
From MIKE HUDSON, Niagara Falls Reporter: Jeff Gannon or J.D. Guckert or whatever his name is isn't a real journalist. Here at the Niagara Falls Reporter, we do 22,000 print copies a week, have a half million Web visitors and a Pulitzer Prize-winner and Peabody Award-winner on staff. Does anyone think we could get an audience with the President? This isn't an issue of old media versus new media. It's an issue of fraud. Among other things, I've had my nose broken over stories I've written, and the way Gannon folded like a cheap suit when his credibility was called into question should tell everybody what he's about. We're running the gay cheesecake shots of him next week, by the way.This too:
I have read much more about the Gannon/Guckert situation in recent weeks than Eason Jordan, primarily because, at least what I've seen, the latter story seems to consist of more he said/he said, while the Gannon/Guckert story is a marvel of good, basic reporting: people noting his copying of GOP documents and using them in his "reporting", to finding the link to a Republican organization, to using his email address to uncover his real name, to finding his AOL page, to discovering the gay "escort" pages. The bloggers have acted as real journalists, just as Woodstein did back in the day. What have most -- not all, the Boston Globe being a particular exception -- of the mainstream press done? Ignore it or, when it became too big to ignore, criticize bloggers.
