With a lot of fuss from mainstream media outlets about bloggers from less-than-objective outlets like the Huffington Post, Salon and Talking Points Memo being added to the White House Press Pool - Gawker, of all the news sources in the world, and which isn’t even in the pool, has the pool reports online before anyone else — and with some incisive analysis from former-newspaper-reporter-turned-blogger, John Cook, to boot. Cook writes:
There’s a rather glaring irony here: The main reason for putting the new kids into the pool is there’s fewer people in the print world left to do it. When newspapers close or consolidate their Washington bureaus to save what little money they have left, the pool loses bodies.
Ironic, indeed.
(h/t Felix Salmon)
Writers and readers of the CJR have given Kudos to TPM as a positive, respectable, reliable and insightful source of news online. They are generally no-frills, no-fluff, political news site - and they are relatively unique in this pursuit. They do not seek to draw in readers with puffery and soft porn, unlike just about every other news organization I can cite. All news organizations have an evident political bias. Nothing wrong with an organization as valuable as TPM being given a place in the pool, and sad to see them grouped with a blog as increasingly tawdry as the Huffington Post.
#1 Posted by Rose, CJR on Mon 7 Dec 2009 at 01:00 PM