In Monday’s Washington Post, Howard Kurtz writes about “Unfriendly fire: The angry media” where he mentions all the stuff that’s been going on in the media the last few weeks (Sherrod, New Black Panthers, etc.) and how the major media outlets are going after each other.

But what caught my attention was what Kurtz wrote about blogging and tweeting:

Certain bloggers were once singled out as bomb-throwers, but now just about everyone in the news racket is blogging or tweeting or trying to entice the gods of Web traffic — which is easier to do when you hit the hot buttons.

Probably the demise of journalism started when the first blog went on line. All of a sudden, some long-haired goateed guy sitting in his basement (like me) can churn out story after story or comment about a story in their local or national newspaper or on their local or national newscast at a moment’s notice.

The blogger can write things or ask things that journalism students learned were not appropriate in their first year of college. The blogger can dissect a reporter’s story and take them to task for not asking tougher questions or for being too far to the left or right. It was a wake-up call of sorts to the journalism world. Probably the calls and letters to the editors to complain went down because the person could just blog or tweet about it for all to see.

I enjoy that part of blogging considerably.

Journalists did not handle it well. Newspapers started “forums” for people to comment about stories to try and generate some web traffic. That got out of hand quickly and many forums are just places for people to troll, for name-calling and for put-downs. Bloggers can approve comments or let them go unfiltered.

All of a sudden, the web traffic started visiting the guy or gal’s blog because they asked questions or said things nobody else could or would say who is on the payroll. Subscriptions to newspapers went down along with advertising. People were laid off.

The world did not end.

Then along came Twitter. The blogger embraced Twitter and could spew out little tidbits of information and more and more people followed him or her.

So what was today’s media to do? They started blogging. They started hosting blogs. They started using Twitter. They could not beat the bloggers so they joined us – which led to more pitfalls in the journalism world. The editors and the station managers could not beat the bloggers or the tweeters so they joined us and many do a terrible job at it!

I’ve been blogging for over five years (much more than most editors, reporters and more than most bloggers) and have a constant and steady stream of readers – for sure not as many readers as some (such as a couple blogs in the state that I must read every day to get my fix). But I place my opinions and comments out there for the world to see and agree or disagree with.

On Twitter I have well over 300 followers – quite a few for someone in the middle of nowhere with no corporate backing to advertise my tweets.

Some say journalism is dead. As Kurtz alludes to in his column media outlets may terminate each other:

Media outlets, which once merely chronicled this era of hyper-partisanship, now seem to be both the purveyors and often the targets of ugly attacks.

Journalism is on life support and in a deep coma. Better call the family and close friends…