Good Grief!

This article in Tech Central Station uses the example of last week’s 60 Minutes Paul O’Neill interview to point out the value that bloggers add to traditional news coverage:

The Blogosphere continues to effectively critique and correct Big Media’s coverage on stories of the day. Consider the latest manifestation of this phenomenon in the coverage of Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, which critiques the Bush Administration through the opinions and recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Suskind’s book received favorable coverage in a segment done recently for 60 Minutes. But the program missed a number of holes, discrepancies, and inconsistencies in its telling of Suskind’s and O’Neill’s story. And while 60 Minutes dropped the ball, the Blogosphere picked it up, and became a resource for much needed perspective on the story of Suskind’s book.

Whether or not you agree with this particular example, the basic premise is true:

It’s becoming a habit for blogs to fill in for the failures of Big Media, and while that speaks well for the Blogosphere, it’s clear that Big Media has some catching up to do if it wants to attain the high journalistic standards it once may have held.

So in the best blog tradition, let me point out the following sentence in the article’s last paragraph:

We’re not even a year into 2004, and it may very well be that we have seen the year’s most overhyped story.