Our local media guru, the Former Union Editor (FUE) often pontificates on the press and the Internet. He often points out that if you want the news read the blogs, especially his, as the local paper and radio stations are often a day late and dollar short. Yet, one to the most interest clashes between the old time newspapers and bloggers is going on right under the FUE's nose, yet he has not even mentioned how bloggers are driving the East Anglia Climate Research Unit scandal stories to the front page.
Mark Steyn writing at the National Review On line Corner notes the disparity:
Michael Gerson has lousy timing. In The Washington Post, in one of those now familiar elegies for old media, he writes:You will not find it on the FUE's blog either, yet the clash between the old media and the Internet is one of his favorite subjects. But, he seem to have adopted the the big paper manta - What Story?And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don't produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting. The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain.That's laughably untrue in the Warmergate story. If you rely on the lavishly remunerated "climate correspondents" of the big newspapers and networks, you'll know nothing about the Climate Research Unit scandals - just the business-as-usual drivel about Boston being underwater by 2011. Indeed, even when a prominent media warm-monger addresses the issue, the newspaper prefers to reprint a month-old column predating the scandal. If you follow online analysis from obscure websites on the fringes of the map, you'll know what's going on. If you go to the convenience store and buy today's newspaper, you won't. That's the problem.