Henry Farrell, writing on the Crooked Timber blog, puts forth a position on the relationship between mainstream media and bloggers which is very close to mine, namely, that both are important and both are an important source of information. Farrell, though, has a message for those bloggers who think that blogs (in the forms that we know them now) will one day replace mainstream media:
” If you think that blogs should replace the mainstream media, then you should be prepared yourself to live up to some minimal standards of scrupulosity, intellectual honesty, and willingness to deal fairly with facts that are uncomfortable for your own ideological position. You should be prepared to live up yourself to the standards that you demand of others. Exercising the “shucks, I’m just a little old blogger” get-out clause is rank hypocrisy when you want the blogosphere to devour the New York Times whole.”