More on Journalism

There's a major debate going on and not many Americans know it. It's about journalism in general, and the debate is sometimes about the effect blogs are having on journalism. For a post on the first part, here's Atrios of Eschaton:

The Roundtable

The weekly political "journalist" roundtables have long been one of my major media pet peeves. You get two versions of them. The first version is the Washington Week in Review version which is all "objective" journalists who come on to discuss the issues of the week. Who are constrained by their positions to be "objective and balanced" and cannot really express opinions. Except they are there to express opinions. So the only opinions they can express are those things which are "conventional wisdom." Which is usually just the coalesced Gang of 500/The Note talking points. Which are heavily influenced by the conventional wisdom production machine of cable news talk shows. Which all skew conservative.

Be sure to see the rest.

The truth is, there's not much to recommend what passes for "conventional wisdom" these days.