Well, I was a little afraid of this. The Chicago Tribune just published an article about bloggers and rathergate (and a bit about rathergate.com). It got a lot of things right, but left some things out. (don’t get me wrong - after the Eyes Wide Shut editorial, I think the Tribune is significantly way out in front of the rest of their colleagues, especially on the blogosphere in general)

Last week, Howard Witt from the Chicago Tribune emailed me, asking to talk about rathergate.com. I obliged - and we spoke for about 35 minutes. I tried to beg off the interview in the first place - instead encouraging him to chat with Bill, Allah, Kevin, Glenn, the Powerline guys, Charles Johnson (who gave him a GREAT interview, apparently), anyone but me.

(Don’t get me wrong, I like the media as much as the next guy - and I love to disabuse them of some of the sillier notions about blogging, but this site was only meant to help people that weren’t familar with blogs and didn’t know the right 15-20 to keep refreshing and have never heard of RSS)

When I spoke to Witt, it seemed clear that he was a lot more interested in the supposed biases of bloggers than the medium itself. Case in point - my employer. I suppose not trumpeting the fact that I work for a right-wing (and proudly so) strategist/fundraiser means I’m hiding something. Hardly, but it makes for good copy, no?

Now, Witt was pleasant enough - but he chose not to write about several things I worked hard to explain (yes, I know - limited space).

• Blogger anonymity: if he writes something for the Tribune, readers should rightly associate his employer with those remarks. Bloggers have the inherent tension between their blogs and their jobs. Acknowledging that very tension would, I think, go a long way in understanding our motivations, and our limits.
• Bias: unlike say, the NY Times, bloggers never claim to have a wall between news reporting and expression of editorial opinion. Our biases are clear. When someone links to something with the term “mind-bogglingly stupid” - it’s not hard to see where a blogger is coming from. Wouldn’t you rather KNOW who you’re dealing with? For every unnamed blogger, there are hundreds of unfamilar editorial board members at newspapers all across the country.

All that said - he hits some points very well - especially the notion that Charles expressed near the end of the article,

“I’ve seen some criticism that bloggers are not edited, and that’s true - we don’t have traditional editors,” said Johnson, the Los Angeles blogger. “But the more important point is that with a readership of several thousand at any moment, if I post something incorrect or debatable, I’ll receive e-mail within minutes. I’ve actually got thousands of editors looking over my shoulder.”

And I think I’d like to send Witt a case of Scotch for writing about bloggers without quoting Kos.