On Bloggers and Newspapers

This morning I was listening to the Michael Smerconish show on local radio. He's a George H.W. Bush Republican who is not much of a conservative although he's the always the guy "on the right" on MSNBC whenever they do one of those inane side-by-side screenshot deals.

Anyway, Smerconish said for the second time in two shows that he's bummed about the state of the newspaper business and is worried because if they go, what will take their place? He also railed against bloggers again and is one of these who has to throw in the obligatory "guy writing on his couch in his pajamas" types. For the record, he also writes for the Philly Inquirer and Daily News and they are in bankruptcy as we speak. His latest on this topic can be found here.

Perhaps Mr. Smerconish needs an education about just how blogs work. Perhaps he's not been enlightened to the fact that newspapers and blogs help each other to survive. A good link from Matt Drudge could bring a paper somewhere between 500,000 and a million unique hits (and newspapers beg him for those links). That is potentially a million folks who would not have gone to that papers' website. The same goes for Glenn Reynolds who is more of a pure blogger. A link from him could result in 30,000 uniques in a day. In the online world, links mean revenue and newspapers are never going to survive without a robust web presence. So a guy "sitting on his couch" is directly benefiting the health of the news paper industry.

Smerconish lamented that without the daily paper, we'd not have had Watergate exposed, the NSA wiretapping investigation or myriad other scandals. And therein lies the problem. Note they were both against the GOP and most in-depth pieces in the papers are. Bias is why we saw a rapid decline in newspaper circulation.

Let me take you back to 2004 when Smerconish's current employer--the Philadelphia Inquirer--ran a 21-day endorsement for John Kerry. 21-days of explaining why Kerry was far superior to George W. Bush was met with raised eyebrows by even the most liberal of journalists. It was pure and simple propaganda by the Inqy and it laid open the bias of the media in grand fashion.

Fast-forward to 2008 and you'll see example number two of why newspapers are dying. The Rev. Wright scandal, William Ayers and Bernadine Dornh's terrorist past, the inner workings of Chicago politics and Obama's scars from it, The shady housing deal with Tony Rezko and the list goes on and on. The main job of the press is to keep politicians in check and they failed miserably this time even more than in the past. They became cheerleaders and dropped any pretense of fair play and non-partisanship. One day they printed a story in the NY Times intimating that John McCain was having an affair and the next the WaPo drooled over Obama's pecs. One day the Times slammed Cindy McCain and the next they fawned over Michelle Obama's intellect. In other words, they shamed every previous journalist worth his salt. I won't even go into how they smeared Sarah Palin repeatedly and daily, whcih may have been the most disturbing media action of the entire election.

There was a time when every politician was fair game and now it's only the ones with an "R" after their name. If the media had done their job and properly vetted Obama, I'd strongly suspect we'd have Hillary Clinton in the White house right now. If they had written of Father Pfleger or the fact that Obama's half-brother is living in a hovel in Kenya on less than a buck a day, it would have had an effect. No one would have known of any of this had it not been for blogs and conservative websites.

One thing Smerconish doesn't get is the fact that not one serious blogger, be they huge like LGF or Glenn Reynolds or small like me want to see newspapers gone. We rely on them and have an interesting symbiotic relationship with them in this brave, new, Internet world. Smerconish has become an elitist because he thinks only "journalists" can break news. Maybe he ought to read Pajama's Media on occasion and see just how good writing can be by "people sitting on their couch." Hell, the way Maureen Dowd mails it in every week, one suspects she's writing while sitting in her basement on a pullout couch but I digress. For the record, again, I subscribe to the Inquirer and have for a decade, I like the feel of the paper and the portability but have to say the bias turns me off.

One last thing, Ed links to this former conservative and current Obama groupie Kathleen Parker who writes:

The biggest challenge facing America’s struggling newspaper industry may not be the high cost of newsprint or lost ad revenue, but ignorance stoked by drive-by punditry.

Yes, Dittoheads, you heard it right.

Drive-by pundits, to spin off of Rush Limbaugh’s “drive-by media,” are non-journalists who have been demonizing the media for the past 20 years or so and who blame the current news crisis on bias.

Parker gets it exactly wrong and like Smerconish sounds elitist. Was Thomas Paine a "trained" journalist? Did Ben Franklin go to Columbia or Syracuse and learn how to be a journalist? This country was built on a free press and the free exchange of ideas. people get their news in different ways now and Parker is upset that her conduit is taking a financial beating. She has to blame someone and lashes out at at "untrained" journalist's for the train wreck daily publication has become. I tend to think it's more a case of the industry employing people like Ms. Parker who have a desperately hard time changing with the times and fearing that the future is here and their place in it is not as secure as it once was.

To sum up this considerable rant, I don't want to see the local fishwrap go the way of the VCR. I want a vibrant, unbiased print media where every politician should fear for his seat. I want a media that will not blame the mortgage meltdown solely on industry but also on the Chris Dodd's and Barney Franks of the world who made the laws that allowed this to happen. I want to pick up the Inquirer and read a piece by Ed Rendell one day, Bill Kristol the next and Michael Smerconish the next. I want to read about every scandal written with the exact same gusto--the Dodd scandal investigated with the same zeal as the Abramoff scandal.

People like Mr. Smerconish and Ms. Parker can't see the writing on the wall but one would suspect when all is said and done, the death of the media will be traced to 2008 when they assisted getting Obama elected but more so that the only real journalist's we have left work for the National Enquirer and broke the John Edwards story while the rest of the media covered for him.

Michael Smerconish Got Played

You may recall that Philly talk show host and moderate Republican Michael Smerconish gained some fleeting pub when he endorsed Obama for president. Smerconish's rationale was that Obama was serious about getting Osama bin-Laden and that was enough to turn the non-conservative Smerconish against McCain and drive him right into the Obama camp because, well, Obama said he would make that a major part of his administration.

Michael Smerconish now has the honor of being among the first people punked by Obama before he even takes office.

It's interesting that a man who has been active in politics for decades was seduced by a few smooth words by a smooth politician and gave up his self esteem for a few those few words and the promise of a blurb in several blogs for one day (and reportedly a new contract).

Congrats Mike, I once listened to you daily but ceased the day you whored yourself out. Enjoy waiting for Obama to act on the sole reason you supported him, although you asserted differently, and non-convincingly on the HuffPo. You can wait with the Daily Kos crowd and all the others who were fooled by a few inane words.

And for the record, I never had an issue with Smerconish inviting Obama on the show, as a talk show host he would have been idiotic not to. My problem is that Smerconish is a Bush Republican--in other words; a liberal Republican and he grew farther to the left of the party to fit into the MSNBC paradigm, He sold out himself.

BTW, why don't you call Obama's people Mike, see if they'll allow another interview. I doubt it now that you've served his purpose.

Obama on Ayers: "I assumed he had been rehabilitated"

Ben Smith at Politico has the story including audio:

In an interview with the sympathetic conservative talk radio host this afternoon, Obama offered the clearest explanation yet of how an extremely careful politician allowed himself anywhere near a former '60s radical who would become a Republican target in this year's presidential campaign.

Obama "had assumed" from Bill Ayers' stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been "rehabilitated" since his 1960s crimes.
In the interview, which was taped this afternoon and will air tomorrow, and which you can listen to above, Obama recalled moving back to Chicago after law school, and becoming involved in civic life there.

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

Where to start.

First, Michael Smerconish is a lawyer and worked for the campaign of Bush 41. He's not a Conservative but is conservative on some issues. Call him Republican lite and he strives to be the guy who's fair. I listen to him daily and sometimes in his quest for fairness, he allows some questions to go unanswered by those he's interviewing. It seems to me that those who get off easier are Democrats because he wants to have them back on so he can continue to be perceived as fair. The fact that Obama chose a local Philly radio station and Smerconish to talk about Ayers says quite a bit.

That said, let's parse this for a second. Imagine if we weren't talking about William Ayers but were talking about Eric Rudolph. Rudolph placed a bomb at an abortion clinic that killed a security guard, one at a gay nightclub and another at the Atlanta Olympics that killed an attendee. He did it for political means in a war against the United States. Rudolph is in jail for the rest of his life.

William Ayers placed bombs at police stations, the Pentagon and during their escapades, a police officer was killed. He did it for political means in a war against the United States. Ayers is a tenured professor in Chicago having gotten off on a technicality.

Now imagine if John McCain was known to have associated with Rudolph actually having met and got his blessing before entering into politics. Further imagine McCain sitting on a board with Rudolph and setting up programs that doled out millions of dollars. What would you imagine the media would say? They would question his judgement and say he was not qualified to lead. It would be a story that would be splashed across the front pages of our major papers daily and would lead every newscast for the rest of the month.

Back to Obama. He said that he thought that Ayers had been "rehabilitated". Exactly what type of rehab is recommended for a left-wing zealot who waged a terrorist war against his own country? What therapy would one prescribe for a man who married a woman who participated in his crimes and was a fugitive for years? Is there a drug that turns one from a leftist radical who plants bombs into a person one would wish to serve on a board with and share lunch?

Both Rudolph and Ayers used bombs to further their political agenda, people died because of those actions and one is rightfully sitting in jail while the other was busy teaching and holding luncheons for a future presidential candidate. There's no difference between Ayers and Rudolph with the exception that one was a right-wing radical and the other a communist radical. Their aims were different but their tactics were identical. Ayers tactics were perhaps worse because Rudolph acted alone while Ayers was the leader of an organization and his followers were also committing violent crimes.

For Obama to say he thought Ayers had been rehabilitated is scandalous and for this reason alone should preclude him from winning the presidency. It's a sham that Obama says he didn't know of Ayers' past and then to say he believed him to be "rehabilitated" when anyone who knew any history of Chicago knew of Ayers. Obama chose to meet and serve with Ayers because Ayers was his ticket to winning elections and it was politically expedient for him to do so. Just as Obama knew of Rev. Wright's racism, he also knew exactly who he was dealing with in Ayers and chose to continue that association because it was beneficial to him. Either that or Obama truly was ignorant of Ayers terrorist past in which case he is too stupid to be be president. Obama may be alot of things but stupid is not one of them.

As for Smerconish, he tossed out softballs and let Obama take batting practice. Instead of following up with something like: "Senator, you say you thought he was rehabilitated, so that means you knew of his past activities when you met him?" (Obama has intimated previously that he didn't know of Ayers past) Smerconish asked about the Phillies-Dodgers series. Granted, it seemed as though he was pressed for time but if you were the one who scored this interview when the Ayers scandal was blowing up, wouldn't you have at least pressed him on it?

Update: I guess Obama didn't watch TV in 1998. It sure sounds as if Ayers and Dorhn were "rehabilitated", doesn't it?: