Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes

Pressthink ^ | 4 October 2004 | Jay Rosen

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On September 26, in 668 precision words, Chris Satullo, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, significantly advanced a debate that Nick Coleman, Dan Rather, Alex Jones and others have trivialized by dumping on the bloggers from a "higher" position. Satullo abandons that, in favor of widening the circle. He says journalists should pay serious attention to bloggers. And he has a warning: Orwellians in the mist.

A pizza-stained paper plate sat between Moulitsas and Atrios. Together, they have more readers than The Philadelphia Inquirer. -- Matthew Klam, New York Times Magazine, Sep. 26.

When journalists go after bloggers, op-ed style, they typically have one thing to say: these bloggers, they're not real journalists. And they don't have to meet our standards, so don't trust them.

Two days ago I wrote about an exceptionally pure case in point: Nick Coleman's Sep. 29 column in the Star-Tribune. (See PressThink, Nick Coleman's Classic Hit.) It's too bad he veered from it to "bloggers are scum," for he was on to something serious that morning.

Coleman--a metro columnist in the Twin Cities who has worked for both local dailies: the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the Star-Tribune--saw a "war against the media" being fought out today. "A lot of it, we deserve," he added. "The traditional media have faltered badly, from the run-up to Iraq to the Rather-CBS fiasco over forged memos." He said he was worried about what was going to happen now.

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Some of the conclusions are listed below. This seems to be a timely, worthwhile understanding as to what journalism is and is not.

We ought to know who agrees and who doesn't with:

The real job of journalism is to help make the public lfe of the nation work well.

For journalists, the rise of citizen comment on the Internet should be something to celebrate and learn from.

The bias discourse has descended into meaninglessness, which doesn't meant the press isn't trapped by its own preconceptions.

The survival of Big Media is not critical, the survival of journalism is. There's a big difference between those two.

Bloggers "who care about facts and ideas," and there are many of those, should be wary of the Orwellians on their own side, who are themselves engaged in propaganda-- the charge they are most likely to hurl at others.