It's not all bad news. Lambert did identify a small number of far less influential news sources that did do regular, valuable coverage of Bachmann. (Two that were recognized by Lambert turned out to be newspapers: The City Pages and the Minnesota Independent. I wrote about them yesterday.)
Lambert stated that the best political profile of Bachmann was done by an out of state journalist (Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker.) That's eternally shameful to Minnesota news professionals who covered politics in Minnesota during the last ten years. But I'm not sure the news professionals in Minnesota feel any shame.
The oddest thing in Lambert's assessment: his conclusion that many of the people who did the best "day-to-day reporting" on Bachmann were not full-time news professionals at all. In the opinion a veteran of Minnesota newsrooms, unpaid volunteer Minnesota bloggers did a better job of day-to-day news coverage on the biggest political career in Minnesota--a better job the state's three leading professional news
media.
That's a really newsworthy conclusion. I can't understand why the state's three leading professional media aren't playing that story up, this week: "LAMBERT: VOLUNTEER BLOGGERS BETTER THAN US ON BACHMANN STORY"
Why did the bloggers do better than the PiPress, Star Tribune, and MPR on the Bachmann story--year after year after year?
These volunteer bloggers have no budget (except for ad revenues from their blogs, and those are pathetic.)
And in most cases, bloggers have no experience when it comes to political reporting. (No J-School, for most bloggers.) And most volunteer bloggers are partisan; they write to publish their own political views as well as breaking stories.
And most bloggers don't do original reporting. Am I right? For most bloggers, the "news commentary" format is the norm--not original reporting by the blogger. I mean: what you normally see from a political blogger is...
(CONTINUED)
...a link to a relevant news story by a reporter or publication, along with the blogger's original commentary on that reporting.
How could a bunch of people who do that,--
--be said to do better
--on the story of the most important political career in the state,
--better than the state's professional media?
It's craaazy, isn't it? But Lambert's right. Some of us bloggers--a very small number with very small resources--were better than Minnesota's biggest media on the story.
Here's how we did it. First, some of us do do original reporting (even though that's the exception.) Once in a blue moon, some bloggers do publish a sourced original news story.
But even when that happens, that blogger's original story has very little political impact unless major media/the legit media decides to pick up that blogger's story angle and run in their publications or broadcasts. (Example: Over the years volunteer Minnesota bloggers collected all this kook/extremist stuff from Bachmann from recordings of her speaking. I, for one, started collecting Bachmann's comments that back in 2003 or so...)
(...But there was no real interest in Minnesota corporate media in publishing any of that sourced, bullet-proof original reporting--even though I handed that stuff to them, free...)
(...so it didn't have much impact until sources inside and outside the state did pick it up, many years later.)
Moral of the story: if none of the big media (internet or print or broadcast) pick up your blogger original reporting--your blogger original reporting probably won't have much impact on the political debate.
That's one reason that a lot of us bloggers rely regularly on other people's reporting. You may not care what we report, but lot of people care what the LA Times reports, what the NYT reports, what CNN or Fox reports.
In Minnesota from 2006 to the present day, the most telling stories documenting Bachmann kookiness and hate came from professional reporting outside the state. Most political bloggers I know use professional reporting as the basis for their own work.
(Then why don't people just go straight to the LA Times or the Fox website, instead of to the local blogger?)
Because the most telling weapon in the volunteer blogger's arsenal is not original reporting: it's focus on newsgathering. The regular collection of relevant links to reliable reporting--all at one website. That enables an interested volunteer blogger to provide something that most professional news sources don't provide--deep focus, on one topic at a time, regularly, at one site. Plus: commentary and context provided by the blogger, and hopefully valuable input from the readers of the blog.
That's the model that the big professional Minnesota news outlets used to sneer at--and have been to imitate ever since, with vary commitment and success.
There is practically nothing to prevent a political blogger from staying on the internet as long as necessary--to gather the day's news on a particular topic, and write on it regularly. Nothing can stop a blogger from doing that, except perhaps the blogger's spouse.
The professional media we're talking about cater to short attention span. The editors move like spinning from spinning tops from riots in Syria to Whitney Houston's funeral.
The blogger can do deep, regular newsgathering with a sustained focus (if they want to.) If the blogger chooses to do this: readers who return to the blog day to day know that they'll find not only links to serious reporting on a topic they care about--but worthwhile news analysis with serious context and focus. (If they don't think the blogger's news analysis is worthwhile--they don't keeping coming back to read.)
But if the blogger's opinion on the news item is worthwhile: the readers get 1) a free editorial publication about the important topic of their choice, and 2) focus, context, valuable and informed opinion...not the "shoot from the hip, I gotta move on to the next topic now" stuff that most professional reporters have to submit.
So that's one reason that the wretched news-gathering, bitching and moaning Bachmann bloggers beat most of Minnesota professional reporters telling the Bachmann story...year, after year, after year...
...More about why the professional press failed, tomorrow.
LINK:
Lambert's story.
http://thesamerowdycrowd.wordp...
It's important to understand why there was a chronic "fail" by Minnesota's leading media.
Because for now, we are all "stuck with" the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Pioneer Press, and MPR as the state's most influential news providers. If they regularly fail--year after year--to report evidence of extremism in the most important Minnesota political career of the last decade...
...we get lies and extremist views as one basis of our public policy. When the most influential media and reporters failed on the Bachmann story--wingers circulating paranoid political theory and talk radio propaganda gained a media legitimacy they never had before in this state. Bachmann's high profile rise in the state and federal government taught them something: that the PiPress, Strib, and MPR couldn't be counted on to report lies and crazy charges made by political figures, as these occurred.
The result today is a Minnesota Republican party where cynics, lying crackpots, and demagogues can maintain power by spreading perverse lies and disinformation. When the most influential media fails (or even spikes) the story of extremism in goverment--they poison our political process.