Mulshine evidently didn’t count on his distorted quote being swiftly debunked — so much for his understanding of the Internet or bloggers.

Does Mulshine have the honesty to admit and apologize for his errors? Does the Wall Street Journal?

Paul Mulshine commenting above failed to follow the simple instructions for comments and has thus self-identified as a moron. Also, the substandard spelling (“repevented”) and grammar in the comment show that it is unlikely that Mulshine ever reached minimal standards for even a beginning journalist and has been carried by editors. The comment thus confirms my conclusions about the low level of discourse by self-proclaimed professional journalists.

TRS

“I do not know why Mr. Mulshine did not give my name. A news man of his esteem would have surely googled me and found that I was doing exactly what he says bloggers are not doing …”

You slammed the entire blogosphere with one ambiguous quote. Contrary to your claim, the quote says nothing about replacing journalists; it seems to predict how Big Media will react to the intrusion of bloggers onto their domain.

Even if your point were valid, using it against the blogosphere as one entity is as meaningful as drawing conclusions about the Washington Post by reading the National Enquirer, because they’re both part of the printosphere.

Had you thought through your analogy, you could have “repevented” your mistake.

I want to echo what Tim asked and see if we can get an answer: who ever said bloggers can, will or are about to replace journalists, particularly on-the-ground reporters? Who in journalism? Which blogger? Which author? Please, tell me: who? Who said it, and who believes it?

Read my article. Glenn Reynolds used a quote to that exact effect in his book.

It reads:

“When enough bloggers take the leap, and start reporting on the statehouse, city council, courts, etc. firsthand, full-time, then the Big Media will take notice and the avalanche will begin,” Mr. Reynolds quotes another blogger as saying.

This is what I hate about the blogosphere. it’s not merely that peoples are too lazy to report. They’re too lazy to read before they comment. Half the discussion on this thread could have been repevented by simply reading the column in question.

Let’s assume that bloggers can’t and won’t “replace” old-fashioned L.C. Smith-pounding fedora-wearing chain-smoking pavement-pounding reporters.

So what?

The changes that are going to happen are going to happen.

They’re not happening because of Glenn Reynolds or Jeff Jarvis or any of the schadenfreude gravedancers. They’re not happening because of Tony Ridder or Gary Pruitt or any of the mossback curmudgeons in the southwest corner of the newsroom who refuse to write for the Web. The causes are much bigger and the effects much broader.

Neither bloggers nor pros disintegrated the newspaper model, separating classifieds, retail advertising, content and delivery into separate products.

Neither bloggers nor pros marginalized the value of wire news, comics, crosswords and whoever subs these days for Dear Abby.

Neither bloggers nor pros destroyed the local retail advertising base, replacing it with big-box stores and Walmart.

Neither bloggers nor pros took on excessive debt to roll up hundreds of independently owned newspapers into megachains.

Neither bloggers nor pros wrecked the global economy, killing local real estate markets, leaving local car dealers to put up brown paper in their windows instead of sale posters, prompting employers to lay off thousands of people right before Christmas.

The pros-vs-pajamas “debate” is a comforting place to go — often for both sides — but it’s irrelevant and stupid.

I want to echo what Tim asked and see if we can get an answer: who ever said bloggers can, will or are about to replace journalists, particularly on-the-ground reporters? Who in journalism? Which blogger? Which author? Please, tell me: who? Who said it, and who believes it? Where in blazes does this (strange) notion come from, in such strength that it has to be refuted endlessly? And I do mean endlessly, as the pattern–journalists lining up to dispute a claim they cannot find anyone making–does not appear to be ending or even slowing. Mulshine was so desperate he had to seriously misuse a Glenn Reynolds quote about pundits to make his point about irreplaceable reporters.

My take: Mulshine’s column has nothing to do with bloggers. He put in his references to the bloggers to rope in the Romenesko crowd, and get their blood moving. It worked. Bloggers aren’t the cause of the economic problems in journalism, bloggers certainly aren’t the cure, and blasting the blogosphere, which Mulshine boasted about at his blog, will not do a single thing to move newsrooms toward a business model that can sustain them.

The fact that we do not know what that model is, and where it’s going to come from is a big problem, an unsolved problem, and the consequences of not solving it–if we cannot–are going to be substantial.

The sad part about it is that Mulshine is just waking up now to a collapse that’s been apparent for at least four years, and instead of educating himself about it, his “contribution” is blasting bloggers and distorting quotes to make it seem like someone out there is seriously asserting that bloggers can replace reporting staffs.

They can’t. They won’t. The only people who talk about this are old media journalists looking for someone or something to resent. An idea that only exists when it is being refuted isn’t worth arguing about.

You gotta love this:

The link from Romenesko, however, sets up expectations for my post that it was never intended to fulfill.

Oh, I see: As a blogger, you can’t be held to the same standards as a “real” journalist (say, one of those old media types)? You can just babble on and not expect to be accountable in any way? This is PRECISELY where the new media fails.

Again, precision is everything with written communication. I did not set out in this post to solve the industry’s problems. I set out merely to touch a sharp needle to what I saw as an over-inflated balloon of pomposity in one particular WSJ op-ed.

Previously, though, I have tried to get the discussion going around bigger ideas:

A proposal for a network ad model

A proposal for creating a “sales and deals” beat

A discussion of Martin Langeveld’s proposal to cut print frequency to save the business

A proposal to rethink the local news product mix for a major metro /

A discussion of how my old organization made decent money creating local, long-form video

Five simple, cheap ideas to increase engagement with local audiences for news organizations

Four ideas to help fix the classified problem

My soapbox: journalists need to become better curators of their beats

But I can’t get over how often the conversation seems to want to get to a pros vs. pajamas POV. Who has ever said that bloggers can replace journalists? Except, in strawman arguments where it’s convenient to set up such fake tensions, the statement just hasn’t been made with a straight face.

That’s my beef with Mulshine. He’s taking a very real problem – the need for newspaper companies to rebuild a broken business model – and trivializing it with a weak attempt to pick a fight with the very online world he’s going to need as a part of that business model.

I love journalism. Newspapers, I can take or leave. If we can save newspapers in some form, great. But the first priority should be keeping newsrooms alive and functioning. How that news is delivered – electronically or in print – should be a secondary consideration, divorced as much as possible from sentiment and tradition.

Yes, but face the fact that when it comes to journalism, Reynolds’ product will almost never be able to equal that of a professional newspaper, or even of a high enough quality to warrant attention. Many times over my 47-plus years as a newspaper reporter I’ve said to someone outside the profession that the part of the job J-school never teaches is standing in the rain for eight hours outside the home or office of someone at the center of a running story, day after day, without the door ever opening, except perhaps when a spokesperson comes out to say “No comment.” Who is going to do that without the certainty of a paycheck? And how about stories that involve sending two or three reporters to Europe or Asia for months on end — will a blogger ever be able to provide that sort of coverage?
The bloggers I’ve read (and there haven’t been that many of them) tend to sound like a bunch of people swapping stories at the bar, where bloviation and exaggeration and tough talk count as much as certifiable facts.
Still, I’m optimistic that an acceptable and honorable form of journalism will survive. It’s just that the readjustment will take a lot of time, and will cause a lot of men and women a lot of pain before we get to where we’re going — and I have serious doubts that dependable coverage of local government agencies will ever exist as it was a generation or two ago.

This bloggers vs. old media hacks nonsense is … nonsense. The message is the message, not the medium, and we old hacks have never particularly cared whether the message is on paper or on the Web or painted on the walls, as long as it gets out there. I’ve never yet heard a reporter tell his/her employer to keep a story off the Web because it’s too “new media” or because they don’t want to be equated with bloggers in pajamas. If every newspaper on earth declared an end to print tomorrow and put everything on the Web, there wouldn’t be a mass exodus from the industry. In fact, there would probably be rejoicing — IF there was an economically viable way to do it.

The problem is, there isn’t. Not yet, anyway. And I, for one, would be willing to sacrifice my salary in the name of good Web-only journalism if, in exchange, the utility companies would waive my fees, my landlord would cut rent to $10 a month, and colleges would give my kids full scholarships. In the meantime, forgive us for needing money.