PressEthic

So says Keller in the Business Week article that my colleague (I like that) Joe linked to.

I read it because I wanted to find out what Keller had to say about the idea of the Times investigating itself. And about when they're going to break their code of omerta on the whole Judith Miller deal.

But this is what caught my eye:

"Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media," Keller said. "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough." Keller pointed out that it cost the Times around $1.5 million to maintain a Baghdad bureau in 2004. (It cost one Times freelancer much more last month: He was murdered.) "This kind of civic labor can't be replaced by bloggers." The Times' assets: "A worldwide network of trained, skilled [observers] to witness events" and write about them, and "a rigorous set of standards. A journalism of verification," rather than of "assertion," and maintaining an "agnosticism" as to where any story may lead. And, borrowing a key buzzword of the day, he said the Times practiced "transparency," or, in math-teacher terms, "we show our work."

Well, hello guantlet at my blogging feet.

That kind of civic labor can be replaced by bloggers, it just hasn't yet.

For the moment, Keller is right. From what I've seen, blogging hasn't gotten beyond armchair reporting - for the most part.

Exceptions? Of course. But not on a scale that makes foreign coverage from papers like the Times irrelevant.

Yet.

As for the Times' assets - yes, they are unmatched by any blog. But who says blogs need Timesian levels of assets to compete?

And besides, haven't I been told again and again...and again...that advertizers are opening their cash dump-valves onto the blogosphere? (I hate that word.)

Who's to say that blogs with "a worldwide network of trained, skilled [observers] to witness events" won't be common someday soon?

However, if blogs are going to challenge newspapers as sources of news, there need to be more that talk less about newspapers and media and more about hard news.

On the whole, you can't argue with Keller - the lumbering giant of the Times can roll its tanks over blogs all day long, thank you very much. For now.

Because for now, blogs have not seriously entered the newspaper realm of hard news.

But when they do, the tortois-and-the-hare analogie for blogs vs. papers, in favor of papers, is not airtight. Lean and mean can win.

As for Keller's "journalism of verification" - yes, it costs money to witness events from somewhere other than your couch, but I'm not sure you need $1.5 million a year to verify your Baghdad reporting for your blog.

Maybe you need it to maintain your ostentatious blogger lifestyle (the linen suits, the ubiquitous cane) but not really for verification.

Maybe blogging will mature to the point that it is ethically and factually policed by a wide section of the news-reading public, and by itself, the way major papers are, and with that gain credibility in arenas like foreign reporting.

Or maybe executive editors will look back at the blog phase and say they knew all along it was a shallow fad while secretly in their offices thanking God that it was.

Blogs haven't passed the test - yet. (And anyway, I like newspapers - I've only been forced into blogging by a certain...oh, uh...never mind.)

Keller's right - it's not enough, but that could change for blogs.

And if anyone's hiring, let me know. I don't want to be the last guy to the party.