I saw that TPM was in the La Times (Blogs Can Top The Presses) and I immediately had to shoot out an email to the author and disagree with his assessments of blogs. So, I posted my email here and thought I'd let "you bloggers" decide if the La Times understands blogs, or not!

MY LETTER

To Whom It May Concern:

I think these statements, which you made:

"These [blogs] are almost always run by partisans of one side or the other. In that, they are nearly the opposite of the sort of coverage presented in traditional media, whose coverage at least attempts to be neutral on questions of policy."

"Most bloggers, in fact, are not journalists and do little if any reporting. But most bloggers don't claim to be journalists. They're bloggers."

are patentally false.

Consider the "Iraq War Question." In the run-up to the the war, the major media published essentially no dissenting opinions and almost all affirmative opinions about the war.

The nice thing about blogs is that they don't have to be everything to everybody AND constituencies form dynamically.

Newspapers-- on the other hand, like the La Times, have to "be neutral," not because it's better journalism, but because they're trying not to alienate readers and/or current and/or potential advertisers.

The blogs, on the other hand, don't have to cater to local populations since their expansion is based on "focused journalism" which can potentially reach the entire world.

Ultimately, I think this "focused approach" is important because, in my view, the MSM never digs down very deeply while the blogs do since they're "iterative, collaborative and diverse" and blogs keep digging down until they hit pay! And, unlike newspapers, if some of the audience don't like the blogs direction, they can break off and form a new blog!

From the WallStreet Journal:

BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- President Bush has brought an unaccustomed message for Latin Americans on his weeklong swing through the region: I feel your pain. And he is taking it to some unaccustomed places -- hotbeds of poverty and disaffection that he generally has missed on earlier trips.

[stuff deleted]

Mr. Bush now seems to recognize that benefits from his free-trade policies are taking a while to reach many people, and that in the meantime, many in the region need reassurance.

So Mr. Bush has been holding an unusual series of get-togethers with poor and disadvantaged people, in an effort to demonstrate that he and the U.S. are sensitive to their situations. He has avoided any concessions to critics -- led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez -- who say that U.S.-led economic freedom is producing losers as well as winners. Mr. Bush's events are arranged to show the downtrodden on their way up.

Yesterday Mr. Bush met in Bogotá with Colombian descendants of African slaves, to celebrate educational and other advances, and to discuss how to help them make further gains. Today he will visit a produce packing facility in Guatemala that benefits poor indigenous farmers.

What do you all think? Is Bush a different man down there? Or what? Do the Columbians know about Katrina, the neglected soldiers and the cut social spending?