Brain Terminal's Evan Coyle Maloney recently interviewed Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, resulting in a very interesting Q&A. Milbank then asked if there was some manner in which the Post and the Blogosphere could collaborate. To which I replied:
I'd be very wary about cooperation or collaboration between the Blogosphere and the WP. There is just too much risk of the blogs either being co-opted or influenced to serve the Post's interests. The great value that I find in blogs is independent fact-checking, story follow-up, and critical analysis of journalism. This is activity that is not necessarily in the newspaper's interests. For example, if they were interested in criticizing coverage of a news story, say by the NYT, wouldn't they be doing it? Has the Post dug deep into the fiasco at CBS to confirm or dispute the findings of the Thornberg Report? And has anyone been impressed with CNN/Howard Kurtz's "Reliable Sources"?
By the way, this is should be the policy with the Washington Times as it is with the Post. And I think that current "market forces" appear to "rank" blogs pretty well already.
Frankly, blogs serve an important regulatory function, and as the Dept of Agriculture doesn't (or at least shouldn't) collaborate with meat-packers, nor should blogworld collaborate with the MSM.
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