Opinion: Online and print media can and should complement each other, but harsh invective from established newstand publications undermines progress.
In its November 14th issue, Forbes magazine published a cover story titled "Attack of the Blogs!" The deck read, "They destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there any way to fight back?"
The article, which is by Daniel Lyons, is deceptive, specious, and just plain bad journalism.
With this article, Mr. Lyons and Forbes do us, as readers, a disservice, and we should mistake neither Lyons' fuming gasconade nor Forbes' absentee editorial oversight for proper journalism.
Several well-respected critics and online commentators have already replied to the article, and I will try not to duplicate their remarks here.
And I am not an indefatigable defender of all things Weblog, so you won't hear me yawping about the superiority of online reportage, the death of print or the supercilious nature of mainstream media.
Lyons does get some things right in the article: He is right that attack blogs represent a small sliver of the rapidly expanding blogosphere (just as I hope that his attack article represents a small sliver of Forbes' coverage).
And he is right to question blog hosts' association with their blog content, especially where ad-related money is exchanging hands. (Although I guess he's forgotten that Forbes runs ads next to his slanted reporting as well.)
But he is wrong to represent bloggers solely through examples such as Timothy Miles. Lyons is conflating Miles' intentions with his technology. The EFF makes that point terrifically well in its parody, which inveighs against pamphleteering technology to great effect.
Just Bad Journalism
I can't speak to all of Lyons' points, but I would like to take him to task on some of his most egregious errors.
The worst: In his sidebar entitled "Who is Pamela Jones," he misrepresents the story to such a degree that one can only hope he was given false information. Otherwise, he willfully misrepresented the facts.
Will laws meant to protect the press harm bloggers? Click here to read more.
In the sidebar, Lyons defends the actions of "intrepid" reporter Maureen O'Gara, who attempted to out pseudonymous blogger Pamela Jones as a corporate shill.
To that end—and this goes unmentioned in Lyons' article—O'Gara published the personal contact information of Jones' family members, and published descriptions of Jones' car and apartment in Linux Business News.
Her actions were so egregious, and so beyond the pale of what is considered honest journalism, that the staff of O'Gara's publication threatened to quit en masse unless O'Gara herself was fired. Read the full details for yourself.
Do I even need to mention that it's tremendously hypocritical, not to mention just plain inane, for Lyons to use O'Gara's perfidious actions to attack bloggers' supposed improprieties? Is there no fact-checking department at Forbes? Is there no common sense?
And Lyons didn't stop there. In his second sidebar, he gives counsel on how to fight back against the blogosphere, and that counsel is totally irresponsible.
Apparently forgetting that his 2,000-word article disparages bloggers for using despicable tactics, Lyons prescribes the following cure for all blogging ills: "Bash back. If you get attacked, dig up dirt on your assailant and feed it to sympathetic bloggers. Discredit him."
Pardon me, but isn't the prescription just as harmful as the supposed ailment? I wouldn't defend a blogger—or anybody—if they wrote slanderous posts, and I don't mean to in this column. But I also would never counsel a counterstrike of calumny. The promise of the blogosphere, which is nothing more than a hyperconnected agora (and nothing less), is conversation.
The better the conversation, the better the results. Lyons' article does little to move the conversation about our common technological condition forward.
A better conversation would have included a fair and balanced counterargument to Lyons' rant. Where is the corresponding article in a recent issue that examines all of the good that bloggers have achieved?
Well, to fill that void, I would submit this column—and the myriad response columns on the Web—as the counterargument. If Lyons' piece has achieved one positive thing, it is to show, despite his best efforts, that the blogosphere can be successful in providing balance where none exists.
In this case, fair and balanced coverage has been achieved across media and across publications.
All that Lyons achieved was a repetition of that age old aphorism: Pot, you just called the kettle black.
Online Media 
