National Journal's "Hotline," R.I.P.

It used to be that people who asked tough questions were called journalists. Nowadays, they're called terrorists.

At least that's what National Journal's "Hotline" publication called liberal bloggers, including this blog by implication, in today's edition.

In a factually-vacant and incorrect article that belies the larger problem with American journalism today, the Hotline today "reported" three rather curious things.

1. Liberal bloggers are akin to terrorists (I'm not making this up).

2. Democratic Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb is actually controling and coordinating what big liberal blogs write (news to me).

3. That writer Josh Marshall, who is himself Jewish, is an anti-Semite. (And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, no he's not.)

There was a time when you simply HAD to read the Hotline to get the latest news, the latests polls, and all the tidbits of gossip that make up the fabric of politics inside Washington. And you paid heartily for it - to the tune of $5000 a year.

Now all that information is available for free on the Web via the blogs and other sites like Rasmussen. There simply is no need - or at least, much less need - to buy the cow when you get the milk for free.

Clearly the Hotline and National Journal, like so many media outlets, are feeling increasing pressure to prove their rather costly relevance. But doing so at the expense of the facts does a disservice to Hotline's paid subscribers and to those who Hotline defames with fictional "gossip" that they quite simply pull out of their hats.

For the record, I am not a terrorist. As for Jim Webb, I only met him for first time at a cocktail party two nights ago - he didn't have a clue who I was even after I was introduced. And finally, I have a funny feeling that bloggers M.J. Rosenberg, Isaac Chotiner, and Josh Marshall aren't anti-Semites - and that was, sure as hell, the between-the-lines implication at the end of Hotline's story.

Hotline, like far too many inside-the-beltway types, has little understanding of the blogs. They don't know the individual bloggers, don't read or understand the blogs themselves, and have little concept of what blogs do or why they're so popular.

In that situation, a real journalist doesn't simply fill the void in his knowledge by making stuff up and repeating GOP talking points. A real journalist, and a real editor, calls up the source and gets the facts, or he doesn't run the story.

The real irony is that if bloggers were as bad as Hotline claims, we'd be publishing articles as error-laden, factless, and biased as Hotline did today.