Jay Rosen has an interesting piece about the "Adopt a Campaign Journalist" method of blogging, where a blog is devoted to watching the work of a political journalist. Excerpt:
Adopting a campaign reporter, and writing a weblog about the work that reporter does, is involving yourself in the press. And you can never predict how involving things will evolve. But that's not why I love it. I love it because it's one-to-one. That cosmic abstraction, The Media, which has no earthly address, is reckoned with by reduction to a single journalist, somebody who, far from the news wars, might be eating a sandwich when you are eating your sandwich. This gives the activity human scale, even if it's antagonistic. Our expanding culture of complaint about Big Media could use more of that-- a human scale.
Here at SDP, I've been monitoring the writing of David Kranz, the dean of South Dakota political reporters, for over a year. I've documented many of the more egregiously biased reports of his, but it may come as a surpise to some that I've frequently pulled my punches (I've sometimes ignored pieces of his that deserved analysis). The reason I've sometimes pulled my punches is because my blog is not dedicated solely to keeping an eye on David Kranz's reportage. I also try to make my blog a place where South Dakotans can get news about Tom Daschle that they're unlikely to see elsewhere in the local media, and conversely, for those outside South Dakota to get news that otherwise doesn't travel beyond the borders of South Dakota. It's no secret that my agenda is to help Republicans get elected in South Dakota, and to expose fake Republicans like Tom Daschle and Stephanie Herseth. By contrast, Dave Kranz's agenda is to help Tom Daschle and Stephanie Herseth get elected. The problem is, he holds himself out to be an objective observer of the South Dakota political scene. I don't pretend to be objective.
I dedicate many hours of the day to blogging about South Dakota politics in part because many South Dakotans appreciate what I'm doing. But the bottom line is that I operate this blog because I want to make a difference, and I believe that I am making a difference.
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