The Chicago Sun-Times ran an interesting opinion piece that, I think, makes some very valid points - but may draw the wrong conclusions. It was called "Burris scoops show how much newspapers matter," and it contains a fair amount of old-fashioned self-congratulatory back-patting over the paper's scoops which have exposed Senator Burris's constantly changing stories about his relationship with disgraced former governor Blagojevich. The article also pointed out, correctly, that the paper's chief competitor, the Chicago Tribune, has had its share of revelatory scoops about the sorry state of government in Chicago and Illinois, and it says:
Our purpose here is only in passing to toot our own horn, as much fun as that is. Truth be told, the next big exclusive in this story might very well come from the Tribune or another paper. It has happened before, and it will happen again -- we break a story and the Trib tops us, or they break a story and we top them. Competition brings out the best in everybody.
What matters most to the people of Chicago is that professional reporters are finding out stuff people ought to know. It matters that Burris, a U.S. senator, was less than honest when questioned under oath. And that kind of stuff -- unearthed by skilled reporters working beats day in and day out -- will never be dug up by bloggers in pajamas.
And that's where we hit the disagreement.
I think the Sun-Times board is confusing good journalism - which both Chicago papers certainly have been practicing in the Burris case and the Blagojevich scandal - with newspapers, which are merely a medium of distribution. And I would argue that, while I agree with them wholeheartedly on the critical role of good journalism, REAL journalism, that kind of investigative reporting is not limited to competing newspapers, nor should it be.
If the competition between two good newspapers in Chicago produces important stories such as the Burris investigation, that's a good thing. But it could just as easily have been between two Web powerhouses. There are, unfortunately, way too many examples of truly crappy journalism on the part of "mainstream" media - and of polished, professional investigative reporting on the part of websites.
A quick look at the Chicago Tribune's well-publicized financial difficulties should reveal the fallacy of putting too much faith in the power of newsprint. And that's really the problem, isn't it? Both those papers have strong teams of reporters. It costs money, a LOT of money, to do important journalism. The struggle at the moment shouldn't be between newspapers and the Web, or newspapers and radio/TV, over distribution rights. It should be over finding a way to pay for good journalism, in an age when the instant communications made possible by the web are changing the ways we get our news. Snarking about "bloggers in pajamas" just doesn't cut it.
Hat tip: Instapundit (which probably shows where MY sympathies lie in this debate!).
," the body of an unknown young woman that appears quite suddenly one morning in Colonel Bantry's library - a young woman completely unknown to anyone in the Colonel's house. To the colonel and the police and the villagers, it is an old literary cliche - but Miss Marple is able to see through the problem and drive the story to an unexpected conclusion.
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