Our regional blogosphere siblings, Todd Epp and David Newquist recently commented on the flaws of blogs. Todd thinks blogs have a "watch-dog" role to play, but cautions that blogging is not journalism.
They can speak truth to power, even to journalistic institutions. But blogs are more provocateur than journalist.
I would take issue with this only a modest point. Bloggers are amateur journalists. Amateur journalism has played a great in the history of this republic. Self-publishers of pamphlets, tracts, and newspapers, under their own names and the occasional nom de guerre, have generated some of our most interesting and influential political rhetoric. I agree with Todd that blogs are no substitute for professional journalism, but add the point that blogs are very useful source of information that the professionals are not ready to release.
Hildygate is an excellent example. If to other purposes, Professor Newquist illustrates the point this way:
[T]he unraveling of this story, however, much is said about the kind of community that South Dakota is by observing how it broke. The confirming story was not published in the local news media that serves the area where Chad Schuldt worked and lived. It broke in the D.C. Capitol newspaper Roll Call with Steve Hildebrand cited as the confirming source.
Precisely. Someone reading the South Dakota blogs who does not regularly consult Roll Call now knows that it was indeed Chad Schuldt who was fired from the Hildebrand-Tewes firm. He knows it before it was revealed on any local media outlet, at least as far as I know.
Professor Newquist takes a typical cut at this blog, against which he has a long standing grudge.
And for folks like Doug Wiken who think I generalize too much about blogs, I will point as examples the constant accusations of moral deficiency posted by Sibson and some of the dreadful lapses into peevish defamation at South Dakota Politics.
Perhaps in his long and distinguished career, our colleague missed some basic facts about discourse. A nasty accusation, unsupported by a single piece of evidence or citation, no matter how well adorned with colorful adjectives like "dreadful" and "peevish", does not count as an example of anything other than the accuser's intellectual laziness and jaundice.
In fact, SDP has been more than fair on this story. And I, for one, have no sense of elation at Chad's situation. I participated once in a phone interview, along with Chad, on South Dakota Public Radio. Though I have never met him in person, I liked the sound of his voice and the way he defended his role as a blogger. I am genuinely sorry to see this happen to him.
I don't think that this crime, if indeed Chad is guilty of it, discredits Hildebrand Tewes, or the Daschle people, or the Democratic Party, or liberals, or anyone but Chad. It does discredit the manner of blogging that Chad adopted over time. He was very fond of calling politicians he disliked "despicable." Now I think there is a place for that kind of rhetoric in political speech, but if you are going to make that your MO, you need to be very sure that you do not show yourself to be the kind of person that reasonable people can despise.
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