Petrelis Files

Dear Friends:

I've been kvetching to Jack Shafer since 1990, when I moved to Washington, DC, to start an ACT UP chapter and he was editor and media critic for the alt-weekly City Paper.

If he wrote anything about my latest complaint against mainstream and gay media or closeted politicians, he considered my facts, I think with all the balance and fairness he could muster, then proceeded to slam me.

Shafer now includes my role as a blogger activist journalist in his current Slate column, with a small degree of respect for my use of Federal Election Committee files and Freedom of Information Act requests, which is appreciated.

You should know that I contacted Shafer recently with my criticism of a recent New York Times story on the mutant HIV strain in New York City that heavily relied on unnamed "health officials," which is not addressed in his new column, and I harbor hope he will in the future look at what is wrong with much of the AIDS coverage in the Grey Lady.

Please follow the link below and read Shafer's full text.

Best,
Michael Petrelis
^^^


http://slate.msn.com/id/2116498/

Slate
April 8, 2005

What Can Bloggers Do That Reporters Can't?
By Jack Shafer

[snip]
Professional journalists have it all over bloggers when it comes to reporting. The first generation of bloggers tends to resist taking off their PJs and donning hip-waders to report the news from the swamp. Reporting is a learned skill and experience counts for something. Also, professional news organizations pay for airplane tickets, hotel accommodations, car rentals, libel insurance, editing, and other resources to make reporting happen. How many unpaid bloggers will cover a war from the shrapneled front? A handful. Maybe.

Yet the pros don't have a complete lock on reporting. Energetic bloggers, such as activist Michael Petrelis, have learned to work the FOIA machinery and the FEC database as well as the best professionals. Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters kicked up an international incident just this week by publishing banned-in-Canada material about the Canadian Liberal Party. Russ Kick of the Memory Hole does heroic work in retrieving banned information and uncovering government secrets. If they wanted to, bloggers could poach the local news beat away from the professional media by covering city council and school board activity that goes undocumented by the mainstream. Greensboro 101, in Greensboro, N.C., has those sorts of ambitions. Likewise, Mark Potts' "hyperlocal" backfence.com hopes to take "reporting" down to the pixel level of neighborhood T-ball games, PTA meetings, and development issues.

As many critics have remarked, blogs will never replace the mainstream media because without the mainstream media to feed on they can't exist. Blogs are parasites, they say. Oddly, when the mainstreamers sup from the trough set out for them by the National Security Archive, the Center for Public Integrity, the GAO, and other institutions, nobody calls them parasites.

Writer for writer, mainstream journalists possess more talent than bloggers, and talent matters when you're competing for an audience. It's no accident the several of the best bloggers, Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan, James Wolcott, and Joshua Marshall, honed their interpretive, narrative, and reportorial skills in mainstream media. It sounds flip, but one thing mainstream journalists could teach bloggers is that there is more to the craft of writing than typing "Atrios nails it!" and linking to Eschaton.

[snip]