J-school prof Michael Skube complained in an LA Times opinion piece about bloggers’ lack of fact-checking, perserverance and restraint, citing respected blogs such as Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo as an example. No stranger to criticism, Marshall was nevertheless perplexed by his inclusion in such a column.
J-school prof Michael Skube complained in an LA Times opinion piece about bloggers’ lack of fact-checking, perserverance and restraint, citing respected blogs such as Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo as an example. No stranger to criticism, Marshall was nevertheless perplexed by his inclusion in such a column.
“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,” Marshall wrote. And, turns out Skube was not, in fact, familiar with the blog he cited as an example of the decline in patient fact-finding. After a few e-mail exchanges, Skube admitted to Marshall, “Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples … ”
“Perhaps I’m naïve,” Marshall wrote. “But it surprises me a great deal that a professor of journalism freely admits that he allows to appear under his own name claims about a publication he concedes he’s never read.
“Actually, if you look at what he says, it seems Skube’s editor at the Times oped page didn’t think he had enough specific examples in his article decrying our culture of free-wheeling assertion bereft of factual backing. Or perhaps any examples. So the editor came up with a few blogs to mention and Skube signed off. And Skube was happy to sign off on the addition even though he didn’t know anything about them.
“I grant you that the blogosphere needs better bloggers. But, as usual, the need for better critics seems even more acute.”
Also, the LA Times has posted a correction noting that the Washington Post did not, in fact, win a Pulitzer for its reporting on the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, as Skube wrote in his opinion piece.
