All this handwringing about newspapers going down the toilet and "real" journalism disappearing amid a cacophony of unreliable voices from 30-somethings in front of keyboards in Mom's basement, the blogger stereotype that mainstream reporters on the defensive often call up, although rarely so directly, before dismissing them.
Well, Talking Points Memo and others pretty much put the lie to all that, but still reporters and editors out there are reluctant to admit they pay attention to anything other than Matt Drudge, a non-blogging, right-leaning aggregator whose one claim to fame was breaking the Lewinsky story. "Drudge rules our world," Mr. Smirky Mark Halperin once intoned while political news director at ABC-TV (he's now at Time and I never hear about him anymore).
But things are changing, maybe not so slowly.
Today, Huffington Post, a left-leaning aggregator as well as story originator with real reporters and editors and everything, has a story up crediting Mcjoan at Daily Kos with breaking the news that 50 — count them, 50 — progressive members of the House have privately pledged to refuse to support any health care bill that does not include a satisfactory public option.
This is it, folks. This is the big Magilla that everyone with an activist bent was working their butts off to get accomplished, calling and calling and calling them, pressuring everyone.
Oh, those 50, it's called the "whip list."
But my point is not that the grassroots effort worked, which is super.
My point is that a middle-aged female blogger who definitely does not live in Mom's basement (she's from the Pacific Northwest and worth subscribing to, as she often covers close-to-home issues) broke a news story worth having. Not Politico, not the NYT, Wapo or the WSJ. Mcjoan at Daily Kos. Hosannah!
The ramifications are profound.
And I shall be redeemed. Any day now, Lord, any da-a-a-y now.
From Huffpo:
Progressive Democrats are taking a hard stand on health care reform, with a majority committing to oppose any health care reform package that doesn't include a robust public option. On Wednesday, they got an inadvertent assist by an anonymous leak of their "whip list."
A whip list, which is generally tightly guarded, is used by congressional leaders to keep track of the private pledges made by members before a vote. The list is kept private to encourage frank answers from members so that leadership can gather accurate intelligence.
UDATE: Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake, which is leading the bloggo whip list effort claims the list was leaked to Mcjoan to relieve the progressives from the pressure. If so, great. Leaks are what the news business is all about if you're serious. Does that mean Mcjoan got played? No, only that she's apparently highly thought of by whoever leaked.
No comments:
Post a Comment