August 20, 2007 02:45 PM
A Question for the LA Times: Who inserted "the blogs" for Michael Skube?
Skube bashes blogs and admits to Ed Cone that he doesn't even read them. He answers TPM's question like this:
So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he was including us as examples in a column about the dearth of original reporting in the blogosphere.
To which I got this response: "I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ... "
Who inserted the names of the blogs for Skube's article that were included if he doesn't read them? Ask jim.newton@latimes.com
Betty Page's cones.
Sour grapes from journalism majors who can't get half the publicity amateur bloggers do.
Can you say phony?! I thought you could...
Skube is an utter fool. He teaches journalism. He knows that a lot of his students read blogs. So he writes an ignorant piece attacking blogs and, in the process, displays his complete lack of journalistic standards and ethics. But when he walks into class and notices that the students are strangely sullen and unresponsive, he will wonder why.
I find it ironic, that a professor has to be told that he hasn't provided enough examples, so a few are filled in for him.
Kind of like having mom help with your homework.
Just a suggestion, but it would be helpful if C&L used less acronyms or at least made the acronym a link so that everyone would know what the acronym stood for.
It is my sincere belief that anytime someone who runs a blog is invited to an interview in the mainstream media, they should AGGRESSIVELY promote the idea that the only reason the blogs are being attacked so strongly is because blogs promote ideas and progressive thought. The Right is scared to death of the fact that Americans are able to communicate so readily with each other because they are the ones who face the most criticism.
Oh, what jolly rot all this is! Skube is merely pointing out that he doesn't read what he writes, or what he writes about. He is the poster boy for our betters, the champions of gooder journalism, and will likely conjure a apt rejoinder at those pesky bloggers (the unclean hordes) while dining upon a delicious plate of crow, followed with a hearty swallow of Yellow Journalism Blanc, a tart and vivacious vintage that delights both the imbiber and the urinal.
++++
ysbaddaden @ 1:
That could be another hit song like Marty Feldman's Eyes.
So which bloggers did Skube-don't include in his ghost-written editorial? All the names I saw were not examples of what he claims bloggers to be.
Who was the editor? I'm guessing Shaggy. Velma and Daphne are too smart for that.
Our media is not covering Iraq so the blogs should step up and take their place.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...
Marlaki's visit to Syria and Russia's sale of missiles to Syria are not being reported.
You can get stories from the British media like the Guardian, the Times, BBC, etc...
Zog The Obvious @ 7:
Amen!! See the comments on the thread below for just such an example of how the blogosphere is intellectually superior, especially in commentary.
Is anyone else creeped out that the Amazon ad on C&L actually goes and gets your Amazon cookie?
I would very much like to see this absurd assertion rebutted:
Thousands of writers throughout history have written for passion or activism without ever expecting or receiving a dime. Including Thomas Paine:
To suggest that anyone who ever wrote only from their heart, for their society, is a blockhead insults all writers and other artists, many of whom devote their lives to their work and still die unknown.
• Detox from Fox: Starve The Beast
A Question for the LA Times: Who inserted “the blogs” for Michael Skube?
I cannot tell a lie, George (Bill Maher) Washington did it.
DNS @ 4:
:lol:
I love that visual. Well played!
Wow, this dude stepped in it, he actually brought down a fledgling little NC school that was scratching its way to respectability:
mskube@elon.edu
Don't make it easy on him...be nice...
Honest Americans with Valid concerns = Bloggers looking for and telling the truth
All of this would not even be an issue
IF WE HAD AN HONEST VALID MEDIA.
If we do a little research..
Who inserted THESE people as valid independent journalists and reporters?
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News
--> Alan Greenspan (husband) Former Chairman, Federal Reserve Bank
John Ellis, Fox News
--> George W. Bush (cousin) In charge of 2000 election projections for Fox News.
Tucker Carlson, MSNBC
--> Richard Carlson (father) neo-con Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and member of Libby Legal Defense Fund Trust
Campbell Brown, NBC News
--> Dan Senor (husband) Former Coalition Provisional Authority chief spokesman, contributor to Fox News, senior associate of The Carlyle Group. director (USIBEX). Connected to Joe Lieberman.
Bob Schieffer, CBS News
--> Tom Schieffer (brother) U.S. Ambassador to Japan, former U.S. Ambassador to Australia, In 1989, Schieffer became a partner of George W. Bush … Ballpark Development, the company that bought the Texas Rangers baseball club.
John Podhoretz, Fox News, New York Post, National Review, Weekly Standard
--> Norman Podhoretz (father), Project for the New American Century member
Robert Kagan, Columnist, Washington Post, Co-founder of Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
--> Victoria Nuland (wife) Bush administration Permanent Representative to NATO
BlueMD @ 6:
Which acronym are you talking about? TPM? The one that had the TalkingPointsMemo link right after the first usage of the acronym?
And oh yeah...the poor poor assistant, you think Jim Newton could've planned this little vacation any better?
I am out of the office until Aug. 27. I will check email occasionally,
but if you need something right away, please try my assistant, Linda
Hall, at linda.hall@latimes.com or 213-237-7928.
Wow, that was kinda dumb citing Josh Marshall as an "example." Duhh!
Manamongst @ 20:
Hee, hee. Poor Linda Hall.
PurplePatriot @ 12:
Well, except for panting lesbian fantasy talk on the previous Countdown thread. Things go downhill here pretty fast when attractive non-right wing women are involved!
But hey, I get it. I feel the same way about Sheldon Whitehouse. Rowrr!
lol @ journalism school
Over and above the journalistic-ethical question, does it really not occur to Michael Skube that the fact that his piece about how blogs don't do any reporting was altered by an editor BECAUSE IT DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH ORIGINAL REPORTING IN IT might be a little, um, ironic? Funny? Pathetic? Help me out here.
To state the obvious, I am hopeful we'll get a full story after the LA gets an earful from C&L readers. The list of questions . . .What were they thinking? Curious.
My letter sent today:
Mr. Newton:
I am not a raving left-wing blogger. I am a middle-aged, working professional, mother of two children. I read certain progressive blogs everyday. Those blogs I read are the ones that have demonstrated that they do research, are well written and reasoned, encourage civil discourse, and cite their sources with links so readers may form their own opinions. It makes me angry that an uninformed writer and a clueless editor have been allowed to tar a responsible member of the blogging community.
I expect a responsible editor to print a clarification that states that the person who wrote the piece was not familiar with the examples cited, and that the examples were added by [name/title of person and what criteria they used to choose their examples]. If the person who inserted the examples did not, in fact, have experience with the blogs he cited, then I expect you to have the integrity to say so.
For your edification, these are the progressive blogs that I read daily that I believe practice the kind of journalism I noted in my first paragraph:
The Huffington Post
The Washington Monthly/Political Animal (Kevin Drum)
Talking Points Memo (Josh Marshall)
The Carpetbagger Report
Bob Geiger
Talk Left: the Politics of Crime (woman blogger)
I read these blogs and Reuters news, BBC news, and the Washington Post EVERY DAY to get a well-rounded and more international scope to the news that appears in the mainstream media. Often, I check the LA Times website as well as the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune to see how each covers a particular story. Quite frankly, the mainstream media spends too much time on celebrity "news" and too little time doing fact-checking and research into the talking points provided to the media by corporations, the government, and politicians.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
This man writes a piece on how 'real' journalist-reporters *research* their subjects, but doesn't actually research it himself! The hypocracy, it stinks!
The Smiths Go To Washington @ 18
Thank you, I've written a similar list as yours, though not as clear and comprehensive as yours, and posted it here and elsewhere and am getting a little frustrated that it's not sinking in and people aren't seeing it.
Then again, repetition might help....
:-)
I believe this below list should be the companion to your above list as the start of any rebuttal about the slant of American Corporate Media
These are stock Market Capitalizations of the the so-called "liberal" Corporate Media, to include General Electric, Microsoft, Time Warner, Viacom and News Corp, who own the following media outlets, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNBC, Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, CNN, and a host of acilliary and secondary outlets as of August 2007:
It totals up to about $977 billion dollars, and a cool trillion bucks if you throw MSNBC co-owner, Vivendi, onto that list.
~Nyc
Can anyone tell me when the LA Times (or any big paper) picked up on the AG firings? Cuz TPM was covering it -- in depth -- long before those "real" journalistic outlets if memory serves.
I'm sure there are other examples. Fire away!
It's kind of like a Monty Python sketch, this professor telling people who to be journalists but not actually practicing the practices he urges. Face it you sheltered fossil -- your days are over!
I mean your days as a journalist are over -- a credible journalist, anyway.
clearly this has jonah goldberg's stubby fingerprints al over it. he was an editor and must have an editor's red pen ( or crayon).
kuvasz @ 33:
Jonah Doughy-Pantload's greasy fingerprints are from the Skube snacks he was eating.
cyrki @ 27:
what? no skippy the bush kangaroo?
Me too.
I am out of the office until Aug. 27. I will check email occasionally, but if you need something right away, please try my assistant, Linda Hall, at linda.hall@latimes.com or 213-237-7928.
[...] I was trolling around the blogosphere as I tend to do, and I came across this post on Crooks and Liars. The post refers to an Op-Ed by Elon Professor Michael Skube. A quick [...]
Okay, so now the average person has to like the Man of La Mancha or those in search of the Holy Grail. We have to find the needle in a haystack fact-reporting reporter and ignore the hordes of panderiong propagandists who are passing themselves off as journalists today. A loss of power or connections can harm us but words written by a windbag can't touch us. Bloggers find out the who, where, when, why, and how faster than this guy can for example zip up his pants.
I'm really sick of blog critics who don't bother to read blogs. For just one glaring example, Skube should know that the Walter Reed series he cites was journalism extremely lauded by the liberal blogosphere - and virtually ignored by the rightwing blogs.
Well I recieved my response this morning, unfortunate that this has fallen off the C and L radar already:
A number of readers have contacted The Times in recent days regarding an August 19th Opinion piece by Michael Skube. In some cases, readers have asked whether Times' editors improperly inserted material in Michael Skube's piece without his knowledge or permission. That was not the case as I hope this note from Skube will confirm for you:
Before my Aug. 19 Opinion piece on bloggers was printed, an editor asked if it would be helpful to include the names of the bloggers in my piece as active participants in political debate. I agreed.
Michael Skube
Los Angeles readers will choose to agree or disagree with his
conclusions, but I hope the above resolves any questions about the editing of the article.
Sincerely,
Jim Newton
Editorial Page Editor
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