Bloggasm

…that it shouldn’t be considered “original reporting” if all your reporting could have been done by simply using Google. Offended and in a huff after several people pointed out that liberal blogs like the Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo were breaking ground with original journalism while conservative blogs served as little more than echo chambers, Malkin decided she’d set the record straight and document all the original reporting that conservative bloggers did last year.

I clicked through several of the links she provided, and while there are a few cases where a conservative blogger actually did do some actual reporting, most of the instances were anything but.

For instance, Malkin cites her own blog post on the supposed conflict of interest that debate moderator Gwen Ifill had because she happened to be writing a book on Obama (I debunked this claim here). But if you actually read through the post there’s almost nothing in it that hadn’t been widely known and Google-accessible months before she wrote it. I’m sorry, Michelle, but an investigative reporter you aren’t.

There are several other cases just like this. A blogger simply strung a few links to articles together or reprinted an email from a reader and POOF, suddenly he’s responsible for “original reporting.”

It’s the conservative blogosphere’s quest for “original reporting” that spawned one of Jon Swift’s most hilarious posts: Great Moments in Election-Year Blogging

You’re a joke, Michelle, which makes it all the more hilarious when you prance around patting yourself on the back for your investigative journalism skills.

UPDATED BELOW

Any minute now, the Weblog Awards, possibly the most promiscuous link whore that the web has ever seen, will announce its 500 finalists.

For the month afterward, any integrity that most of those 500 bloggers have built up over the last year will slowly bleed into the gutter until Feb. 1 when they pick themselves up, look at all their “Only one day left, remember you can vote once a day!!” posts and realize they’ve set internet journalism back once again.

Seriously people, these thinly-masked popularity contests are pathetic; you’re all being gamed. The administrators of the awards know that your shallow egos will bring them thousands upon thousands of visitors that they hope to quickly monetize with some banner ads.

If the administrators truly wanted to recognize good internet journalism, they would have people nominate actual blog posts and series rather than just blanket winner-take-all blog nominees.

To those who are nominated, I issue you a challenge: When your nomination is announced, don’t link to it, other than maybe a single post noting the nomination. Don’t play their game - at least you’ll be able to keep your integrity in the process.

UPDATE: The irony! I was nominated for an award!

I’m sure this isn’t a new trend, but I’ve developed a major pet peeve lately with blogs that don’t adequately date their posts. I’ll find myself reading a post and suddenly wonder when it was published, and rather than being able to check the date at the top of the post, I have to scroll up several posts before being able to find it.

Here’s an example with TV Newser:

By just looking at that post you can tell the time of day it was published but not the date. In order to find the date, you would either have to click on the permalink or scroll up a good bit.

You can’t read an article about Web 2.0 without some mention of the “immediacy” of the Net, that news breaks so quickly on the Web and editors have to adapt to this. If this is true — and every millisecond matters for timeliness — then shouldn’t we be putting more emphasis on understanding exactly when something is published, up to the very minute? It’s certainly something that I consider when I’m reading news, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed it.

Have you heard the news? Jeff Jarvis, the Big Thinker New Media Guru of Web 2.0, wrote in a blog post complaining about how a reporter took his words out of context that the interview is dead:

[W]hat really struck me in this process — and it is always good for a journalist to endure journalism — is that the interview itself is becoming outmoded….

I didn’t say a single new thing to the Observer; everything I said I’d written already on my blog, so I was only drawn to repeat myself (and after four days of recording an audiobook, even I was sick of the sound of my own voice- - yes, it finally happened).

The process of the interview has the reporter hold all the cards in his hand: who he talks with and what he will reveal to each and what he will say in the end, without links to what any of the parties has said. Then the reporter gets to toss it all on the table. A process of links and discovery and conversation and correction would be far more illuminating of the ideas and issues than this old process of control through the sieve (and efforts to trump up conflict and drama). That, you see, is the real moral to the story: It’s the form that’s bullshit.

It makes you wonder if Jarvis has done any actual reporting before, doesn’t it?

Here’s an imagined scenario in which Jarvis the reporter calls up the spokesman of a government agency after officials in it were indicted for corruption:

JARVIS: Hi, I’m from the Examiner and I have a few questions about the indicted officials.

SPOKESMAN: Um, everything you need is in the press release.

JARVIS: Yes, but the press release didn’t include key details and doesn’t address the contradictory statements made by the officials during the investigation.

SPOKESMAN: Hey, aren’t you the one who called for the death of the interview? We even copy and pasted the press release into our new blog on the agency’s website. You’re just trying to “hold all the cards in your hand” like so many other journalists. It really is just egotistical of you.

JARVIS: Well, I suppose I did say that. I’ll just go and reprint the press release that you sent to 30 other reporters –

SPOKESMAN: — and don’t forget published on our blog.

JARVIS: Oh yes, that too.

Note to news agencies that are currently paying Jarvis thousands in consulting fees. If he comes to you tomorrow with this new revelation that your reporters don’t need to interview people: RUN.

Just another example of Jarvis taking a singular experience of his and applying it to the entire industry.

UPDATED BELOW

After reading this absolutely brilliant takedown of “new media guru” Jeff Jarvis, I felt myself asking this question: What has Jeff Jarvis ever done to earn his “new media guru” street cred?

Kevin Rose went out and did. Craig Newmark went out and did. Nick Denton went out and did. Larry Page and Sergey Brin went out and did. Michael Arrington went out and did. These folks I just listed came up with ideas, invested in them, and then went on to flourish and profit in new media.

Jarvis? The only appeal that he seems to offer is the fact that he’s an old media dude who “saw the light.” He’s perpetually in “I told you so” mode and yet very rarely comes up with real results. He speaks in vague truisms while arrogantly declaring the Truth and frothing spittle at the old media “curmudgeons.” His ideas are vague and unoriginal.

He is the classic example of “those who can’t do, teach.”

My favorite quote from the Slate smackdown:

It’s an example of his blind allegiance to the wisdom of the consumer, to quantity over quality and expertise. Everything else is elitism. He’s the Sarah Palin of gurus. The crowd is always right.

Maybe the old media types at the New York Times and AP are impressed by his tirades, but forgive me if I can’t differentiate his writing from the hyperbolic anti-MSM rhetoric of your average Digg commenter.

UPDATE: Jarvis responds in my comments section, and I respond to him.

First example: The More Things Change… — The post heavily quotes from Huffington Post without linking us to the actual article.

Second example: You Know What this Post-Election Landscape Needs? More Nate Silver — The post heavily quotes from the New York Times but doesn’t link to the article.

This is a trend I’ve seen more and more. Either burying links at the bottom of posts that merely summarize the article being linked to, or just throwing the links out the window all together. With the flurry of all the “death of the blogosphere” posts going around lately, it’s hard to look at these examples and not fear that the democratic collaborative feel of the blogosphere is collapsing as bloggers try to rope in more pageviews.

Let’s get something straight here. The Huffington Post is not a blog, and shouldn’t be called one. And it shouldn’t be compared to other individual blogs. It is a blogging platform, a Web 2.0 device much more similar to Blogspot, Livejournal and Typepad than Boing Boing, TechCrunch or Gizmodo. It is a collection of thousands of bloggers, and in that sense does not deserve to be perched atop Technorati’s Top 100 unless an individual blog within Huffington Post were able to amass more links than Boing Boing, TechCrunch or Gizmodo.

In that vein, comparing its traffic numbers to places like Drudge and individual blogs is unfair. In most aspects, the two aren’t equatable. Drudge is a singular person who sometimes uses one or two hired helpers. In terms of per capita traffic, Drudge still outperforms Huffington. Hell, in terms of per capita, Instapundit still outperforms it.

Want to put Huffington Post in perspective? Then compare its numbers to places like The New York Times, Blogspot, Livejournal and other platforms that utilize thousands of writers. But then in that case journalists would have to stop pretending like Arianna Huffington is the new goddess of the internet.