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. Continue reading →