Yes, even today many opinions held about weblogs among Big Media folk need to be modified by the information that said opinion was arrived at when the holder had acquired virtually no knowledge about blogs, blogging and how it works.

Peggy Noonan hits the nail square on the head with this observation.

"Someone is going to address the "bloggers are untrained journalists" question by looking at exactly what "training," what education in the art/science/craft/profression of journalism, the reporters and editors of the MSM have had in the past 60 years or so. It has seemed to me the best of them never went to J-school but bumped into journalism along the way--walked into a radio station or newspaper one day and found their calling. Bloggers signify a welcome return to that old style. In journalism you learn by doing, which is what a lot of bloggers are doing."

I can't help but think this is what some people fear most. Which is some of the fears Robin seems to be trying to address. It is the underlying question of who is or isn't a journalist that should get preferential treatment in courts. Personally I'm not so sure that preferential treatment of the MSM / Journalists by our legal system is warranted at all. If we can not get to the truth due to legal barriers then it is time to dismantle the barricade and put everyone on equal footing. This may well mean changing the laws for all and not just the select.

"second, while it's okay to disagree with other bloggers, and even to say they're on the fringe, it's not very ... effective ... to do so without making your case in some detail"

Ah, but what if it's okay to disagree with a message board and say it's on the fringe "without making your case in some detail?"

And really now, if FreeRepublic isn't the fringe, I don't know what is.

Years ago, James Fallows had a good piece in Atlantic Monthly, "The Case Against Credentialism." It's not online, but Google uncovered a mention in a review of the work of a wonderful nonfiction writer/journalist, John McPhee. Some of the rhetoric in the except that follows is quaintly and woodenly Leftist, but the central thrust is very relevant to Robin's conventioneering as a "citizen journalist," and to Hannity's and Noonan's comments on blogging. And it dates back to the Disco era!

I've corrected some OCR-spawned typos; check Footnote 5 of Sharon Bass' essay for the original text.

5. James Fallows ("The Case Against Credentialism," Atlantic, Dec. 1985) referred to the rise to professional status as "one of the most familiar and cherished parts of the American achievement ideal." Joseph McKerns, Arthur Kaul, and John Pauly discussed various concerns about the professionalism of journalism at the 1984 meeting of the American Journalism Historians Association. McKerns outlined the pathways to professionalism in American journalism, stating that professional Journahsm is a twentieth-century institution born of the Progressive Era and resting on a set of shared values. Professional journalists, according to McKerns, "like other professionals, seek to enhance their social prestige and status while serving the social order with their acquired skills and expertise." Arthur Kaul concluded that professionalism was a cover for the exploitation of journalists and the public to protect the property interests of capitalist mass media. John Pauly discussed the news itself as having become professionalized, a "privileged form of knowledge." He has argued that journalists since the 1920s have not only joined the professional ranks, but have "proposed to teach citizens how to read the news more carefully." The significance of these efforts, according to Pauly, is that they have established in newspaper reading "a new conception of citizenship, democracy, and public discourse."

The issue lies in disseminating the truth. There is no monopoly on speech or truth. One need not take any credentialed course to perform this function. A brain surgeon however is a different matter altogether.

Ah, but what if it's okay to disagree with a message board and say it's on the fringe "without making your case in some detail?"

And really now, if FreeRepublic isn't the fringe, I don't know what is.

Well, the issue is web credibility. The audio clip didn't position Hannity as a knowledgeable blogger, it made him look like a wannabe (at least to my ears). And, I thought he could have positioned his site without slapping the Freepers. I suspect he did that in order straddle the "lynch mob" v. MSM divide. Which is fine, but to do that when you're not much of a blogger yourself seemed gratuitous to me.

Re: the Free Republic as fringe, they're certainly on the hard right.