Washington Post cribbing research from blogs?
Politics 08/26/2003 |RonK at the Daily Kos points out today that it appears the Washington Post’s Dana Millbank is doing a lot of research by reading weblogs.
Of late, our Dear Leader seems to have become Fair Game in the Big Media. And WaPo’s Dana Milbank seems to have been reading the blogs.
What’s the earlier blog reference you can find for each of the observations in Milbank’s 2003-08-26 column?
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I can date two of the referenced items in the article (and did in Kos’ comment thread):
Flag desecration: July 25th, 2003 — I mentioned it here, via John via Kos via Wyeth.
Compassion: Aug. 20th, 2003 — I mentioned it here, via Atrios and Len via Kos via ‘K.Y.’.
I don’t mind at all if Millbank is discovering news items worth commenting on through the blog network — I certainly do it all the time — though I do wish that the sources for the individual items were sourced and given credit. I do my best to do that with each post that I pick up from someone else, it seems only fair for a real journalist to do the same.
[See also: Compassion | Flag Desecration | Texas pledge | Under God? | First floor: mens wear, ladies undergarments, and zero-g toilets ]
4 Responses to “Washington Post cribbing research from blogs?”
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schinji
dang
Cheryl
Bertamum
Michael Hanscom
August 26th, 2003 at 10:21 am
Congrats on the DKos link, Michael. You clearly earned it. Soon you’ll no doubt be flooded with Kos regulars.
BTW, the Seattle skyline is a nice touch. By comparison, my own nascent TypePad effort needs a lot of work.
August 26th, 2003 at 10:22 am
I agree with you to a point. At the same time, unless the ‘backup’ - the hard facts - are provided, Millbank still has to do a lot of work. There are often a lot of sources not named in a big news story. They are called ‘background sources.’ Putting up the ‘via via via’ in newspapers would not only extremely long (taking up valuable space otherwise devoted to the rest of the real info in the article), it would bore readers out of the story. Yes the publicity would be good, yes the citing of all sources would be good, but in the end, it would make the story less effective. Newspapers have limited space, unlike blogs. Millbanks’ story should be devoted to info he (she?) has had to personally research and back up as well as the leads he got from public blogs.
What would be best in the end is for Millbanks to do a feature story on the power of political blogs for the Post. That would get more attention from the sorts of readers Kos/Atrios/etc would benefit from.
Now I’m off to try to watch the live feed of dean in chicago. my connection is crap, tho.
August 26th, 2003 at 11:31 am
Kirsten — certainly, a full “via, via, via” wouldn’t necessarily work too well. However, something as simple as “lately, online weblogs such as Daily Kos and Eschaton…” (with URLs listed) “…have been calling George Bush to task, pointing out various questionable items such as…” would have been enough to at least recognize and credit the sources.
Good luck on catching the Dean feed!
Bragan — thanks for the heads-up on the link, I hadn’t seen that yet! I’m gonna be famous!
(or something like that)
August 26th, 2003 at 1:05 pm
Okay, I take it back. I was thinking it was less verbatim than what I just read over at eschaton (re ‘compassionate conservatives’ and colorblindness). That level of quoting should really be attributed - he doesn’t even have to name the blog, but could simply contact Kos to confirm the use of his full name.