Dog bites man: the LA Times insults bloggers and praises the mainstream media

With a story title of Newspapers, bloggers now on same page, one would hope that the "professional journalists" of the LA Times would bury the hatchet. As is, they couldn't resist the fine MSM tradition of insulting bloggers.

The lead:

Once upon a time, newspapers wanted nothing to do with bloggers, those amateurs who opined on anything that caught their fancy, whether it was interesting, or accurate, or not.

And the obligatory quote from someone with a fancy title:

"There's a lot of uninformed opinion on the Internet and not a lot of solid reporting," said Fred Brown, vice chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee and a columnist at the Denver Post. A professional journalist "respects the truth and lives up to standards of ethics. Certainly that isn't the case in the blogosphere."

In fact, a key driving force in the rise of blogs covering news & politics is that newspapers do no such thing. For some insight into this history, start with a phrase from a glossary of blog terms:

Fact-check (your ass)

verb. To use Internet search engines to ascertain the veracity of dubious claims made in the press.

(coined by Ken Layne)

Usage: "We can fact-check your ass!"

(Per a Google search, the phrase was coined in 2001. For insightful commentary on how blogs can help journalism: here's a useful search of the indispensable BuzzMachine by Jeff Jarvis.)

The article did include one positive view:

The Houston Chronicle, for one, has recruited 50 reader-bloggers whose commentary appears its website. ...

Scott Clark, vice president and editor of Chron.com, said readers' blogs had expanded coverage. "Many of our readers have specialized knowledge and passions," he said. "By adding them to our site, we tremendously expand the scope of information that we're able to provide."

The driving force (per Caroline Little, the chief executive of Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive):

It's about figuring out how to monetize other people's content

Though some of the newspapers do share ad income with blogs. (TBD: research how much for each.)

What's the last word the "professional journalist" wants to share with readers?

Teaming up with a newspaper is a way to establish credibility, said Dave Panos, the CEO of Pluck, which distributes blog content to a handful of newspaper sites, including USA Today's, through a service called BlogBurst.

"Being picked up by the mainstream media," he said, "is the highest form of flattery."

Open question: what percentage of top 100 (or 1,000 or 10,000) bloggers agree? My money is on "very few".

Hat tip: Techmeme.