Um, Where to Begin?

Mike Masterson turns his attention this Saturday to the eeeeee-villllll that is the blogosphere in his op-ed column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. We get the usual set of new media hater cliches ("pajama-clad pundits," "Internet rumors," "accuse-anything Internet").

I've known Mike for a while -- since back when he was the editor at the NW Arkansas Times -- and there's probably much more to this than meets the eye on the column. It comes for me at a very bad time to counter, but in time, I think will get a written rejoiner.

His premise is the heart of the series I work with on the side at KUAF, "We're History," where Kyle Kellams and I dissect the presentism that runs rampant in the media.

One of the money quotes in Mike's column:
"Sad to say, calculated rumors, shaded truth and outright lies have become commonplace in what 20 years ago was the primary marketplace of reported facts."

Um. Gee. About 25 years ago, I was still working in a newsroom. Guess what, there was plenty of calculated rumors and shaded truth to go around about one Edwin Edwards, high-times Gov of the great state of Louisiana. Some of them started by Eddie himself. Remember when he famously quipped that he couldn't lose unless he was caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy?

The difference? Anyone can publish the rumors today.

There's more in this, and with deadlines looming I'll let this ride for now with just one small counterpoint.

Does Mike forget that a little over 100 years ago, that great bastion of journalistic principle, William Randolph Hearst, was trying to foment a war with Spain? How about those upstanding politicos of the party newspapers in the 1800s? Too old? Yesterday's freak-show drug addict becomes today's sage -- Hunter S. Thompson did call for Hubert Humphrey to be castrated and said things of Richard Nixon that, well, remain scatological even in the 21st century.