Jeff, you know I think your concerns are well-founded, but I do believe that participation rather than shunning is a way to help move things in a new direction. That’s me.

Like your blog. I think if I’m going to write so people can actually read what I’m writing I guess I’ll have to go back to a conventional blog and get my writing off MySpace.

Anyway, I agree with you about feeling that way about the PD. And I see Jill’s point to. But since I know Jill keeps up with the comments, let me opine on yesterday’s Ombudsman column which is a perfect example of why I get upset at the PD.

So Diadiun (who I worked with at the News-Herald long ago) claims they won’t report on the British opinion survey because they don’t find the methodology credible.

By writing the column, Diadiun reported on it.

The second amazing thing about this is that we could go back to the media build up to the invasion of Iraq. I wonder how many stories about WMD and flying drones the PD printed then, taking the government at its word without doing any of their own fact checking?

See where I’m going here. Double standard.

And Ted (and Kevin O’Brien for that matter) should know better. The survey was NEWS and should have been reported. It would have been entirely appropriate to include sources within the story that cast doubt on the methodology of the survey – that’s fair. But not to report on it AT ALL is, well, quite rich, IMHO.

And in the same column, Ted writes about O’Brien getting into an online pissing contest with other bloggers about the subject matter.

While I’m sure O’Brien enjoys this sort of thing, its really quite unprofessional for him to be getting down and dirty in blogland. In fact, its about as unprofessional as printing comment from readers in the Op-Ed page without any names, cities or other attribution. But that’s where the PD is now – desperate to capture the zeitgeist of vox populi.

One could tear one’s hair out at the hypocrisy of it all but let’s throw one more wrench in the words. On the main opinion page, who were the two opinion writers chosen this Sunday. Top of the page was the neoncon’s neocon Victor Davis Hanson and below him was George Will.

Hmmmm.

And frankly, I don’t count Maureen Dowd as a progressive column although I’ll concede that some people do.

Balance? Fairness? The PD? You kidding me?

It seems more often than not with Diadiun and O’Brien the zealots are running the asylum.

Now, that means I put up with a lot of cognitive dissonance from time to time on any particular situation. And I would say that the co-existence – in the pure sense of that word meaning that two things exist at the same time – of traditional papers like the PD and every other form of communicating and disseminating information is a good thing.

I once compared the co-existence to the fact that there are still people who get their gas from the one full service pump at the gas station. George replied with something like, well, yeah, but how many of those are there.

True – there aren’t many at all. But if you want one, you’ll find it.

I see papers like the PD as serving the same function. There are people who want their news that way. What’s it to me? I’m still finding news the way I want, trying to tell it the way I want, question it and so on.

Now – I suppose one argument against this co-existence is the perceived motivation for why the PD and the like exist: profit, mouthpiece for profit – whatever.

But you know what? Those papers, some of them anyone, still provide plenty of stories we wouldn’t know about.

Just as do blogs.

I work hard, Jeff, to link “downstream” as you call it. I laugh because I AM downstream. lol

I just don’t see it as an either/or proposition. The papers have been dying out and unable to re-establish themselves for more than two decades now. The blogs are just one element but certainly not the only one.

Finally – as I wrote in a comment on BFD where George linked to this post, I’ve written recently about the idea of creating media literate writers (not my idea – a j-school professor’s idea). I see Blog 5 as the PD’s way of trying to do that. It’s not geared for you or me. It’s geared as a way to entice others to try something new.

Now – if a PD feature, which is ONLY ONLINE right now, introduces more people to blogs and has a positive effect on those people and causes those people to venture further into the blogosphere, I cannot complain.

For example, the public’s emails printed in the Dealer about Burke Airport remaining open all say that Jackson’s decision is stupid and sad. But the Dealer’s editorial page says keeping Burke open is OK.

That dichotomy establishes the Double Dealer as a two faced hypocrite. They are willing to fill their organ with free material emailed to them and free material posted on their blogs, and pay Mr Knoll to aggregate blogs in order to bring add viewing visitors to the DD.com, but at the same time the DD shoots those same people in the head by supporting and advocating for just the opposite of what the majority of the opinions in the emails and blogs desire.

And there is another important reason not to link to the Double Dealer: in order to invigorate and democratize our civic space we need to link DOWNSTREAM to the small blog, the little unknown blog. This is what will expand the blog network, energize the civic space, and help make our political and governmental arenas honest and responsive.. Linking upstream to the commercial media will only strengthen the profits of the corporate organizations which have demonstrably failed us, especially here in NEO.

Don’t be cuckolded – click your mouse downstream to give those citizen sites the unique visitor stats which may, someday, help the little blog make a living.

Thanks for the heads-up! We’ll have to start watching this!

Thanks for the reminder. Blog 5 is now on planet neo.

The person responsible would be exactly me. Blog 5 is, at least for now, an online-only feature, so I’m glad you’re spreading the word. We’re monitoring more than 150 local blogs so far, but WoM is a contender every week.

John