I don't think the sloppy reporting done by the Globe, the Times, or Time, would be done by a less mass-oriented and more specialized magazine, such as Science. Blogs don't uniformly outperform traditional mass media on that score -- they may even be worse on average for all I know. But particular blogs can reflect particular expertise, just like Science. The interesting thing, as far as I can tell, is that ideology performs its understood function in the Time piece: there isn't coverage of the full spectrum of opinion, and ideology takes the place of facts, as a frame for the story. You show me a J-school where they don't teach you to seek out varying opinions in a piece. Yet J-school 101 seems to be precisely what is missing from the Time piece.
by Richard Henry Morgan on January 27, 2005 at 10:18 AM