Blogs can top the presses-take a bow, TPM and bloggers everywhere!

[babylonsister]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-blogs17mar17,0,2952916.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Blogs can top the presses
By Terry McDermott, Times Staff Writer
March 17, 2007

snip///

The bloggers used the usual tools of good journalists everywhere — determination, insight, ingenuity — plus a powerful new force that was not available to reporters until blogging came along: the ability to communicate almost instantaneously with readers via the Internet and to deputize those readers as editorial researchers, in effect multiplying the reporting power by an order of magnitude.

In December, Josh Marshall, who owns and runs TPM , posted a short item linking to a news report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about the firing of the U.S. attorney for that state. Marshall later followed up, adding that several U.S. attorneys were apparently being replaced and asked his 100,000 or so daily readers to write in if they knew anything about U.S. attorneys being fired in their areas.

For the two months that followed, Talking Points Memo and one of its sister sites, TPM Muckraker, accumulated evidence from around the country on who the axed prosecutors were, and why politics might be behind the firings. The cause was taken up among Democrats in Congress. One senior Justice Department official has resigned, and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is now in the media crosshairs.

This isn't the first time Marshall and Talking Points have led coverage on national issues. In 2002, the site was the first to devote more than just passing mention to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's claim that the country would have been better off had the segregationist 1948 presidential campaign of Sen. Strom Thurmond succeeded. The subsequent furor cost Lott his leadership position.

Similarly, the TPM sites were leaders in chronicling the various scandals associated with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

All of this from an enterprise whose annual budget probably wouldn't cover the janitorial costs incurred by a metropolitan daily newspaper.

more...

[fed-up]

1. k/r nt

[Cooley Hurd]

2. K&R for JMM & TPM!

Here's a nice pic of Josh and Paul Kiel from the article:

[KharmaTrain]

3. It Feels Good To See TPM Get Some Credit

As an early reader of Josh and supporter of all the TPM sites (and theyy're expanding again), it's great to see this site get some get notice. Here's to Josh, Paul, Justin, Greg, David and the others who shead light on the darkest days of the past 5 years and continue to restore my faith in what real journalism and reporting is about.

:toast:

[Venus Dog]

4. Hooray for Josh!

So happy to see him getting credit now for doing such a tremendous job all these years. Happy St. Patty's Day to ya, Josh and staff :toast:

[City Lights]

5. Josh rocks!

:toast:

The corporate whore press should take notice.

[papau]

6. always two sets of competing "facts" that are equally valid - never a GOP scandal - is not TPM's

style- but the non online media seems to have bought that right wing meme.

Indeed I doubt that Josh feels a need to get competing "factless facts" and spin from the think tanks, or even to report comments by GOP hacks like Tony Snow or his administration toadies in the GOP when there are no verifiable facts in their statements.

Josh will never move "up" to being a major media reporter/stenographer the way he is going.

Thank Goodness! :-)

[AussieDave]

7. I just posted this over at Editorials & Other Articles

TPM does important work and is getting the recognition it deserves, grudging as it may come. Here's an abject apologia from Jay Carney at the Time magazine blog Swampland for pooh-pooing Josh Marshall's pursuit of the US Attorney story (link here http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/01/running_massacre... )

http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/03/where_credit_is_...

After both posts, of course, readers let Carney have it with both barrels - he was told after the January post how wrong he was.

Karma is an absolute bitch.

[Jacobin]

8. TPM has helped to fill an utter void in investigative journalism

They do excellent, careful, tireless work.....like the WaPo and other dead and gone newspapers once did.

[AwakeAtLast]

9. KO referred to TPM just last night!

Woohoo! :woohoo:

[KoKo]

10. WOO HOO! Good News....and now maybe they will start to recognize

the importance of all the Researchers who contribute here and to Kos, Firedoglake and everywhere in the "Comments Sections" all over the Liberal Web.

We've created our own "Echo Chamber" that doesn't use Talking Points from the Think Tanks and Fundie Evangelicals echoed through the RW Blogosphere by the minions of Hate like Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, Beck and the Fox News crowd.

I'm glad to see Josh get some credit after he and Linda Rozen were so badly used when they tried to get to the bottom of WHO wrote the Niger Forgeries and got tossed when Dan Rather's problem at CBS shut it all down.

But, the whole Liberal Blogosphere and the "Keyboard Warriors" deserve credit for "growing" the Liberal Blogosphere, too.

:toast:

[symbolman]

11. I'm glad to see TPM gets it's just rewards

but no one mentions that Takebackthemedia.com led the way with visuals, we practically Invented the Flash Political attack ad online back in 2000, when we had over a 100 million hits our first year alone, with the Flash work that we created, Stranger and I, and it all started right here on the DU with Stranger and I 'dueling' over Flash attack ads against the Bush admin..

Many people have imitated and developed their own style, but man, WE WERE THERE in the trenches showing folks how to kick some ass with FLASH :)

Once again, Congrats to Josh, he's consistantly held their feet to the fire, with Truth, accuracy and CLASS :)

Hey LATIMES, give us a jingle, I've got some classic Flash work you might want to tell the damn Truth about..

[Hekate]

13. Hey, Symbolman -- DU remembers, and applauds your groundbreaking work

:hi:

Hekate

[loudsue]

14. Boy weren't those the good old days!! Dueling FLASH attacks!!

:hi: You & AmericanStranger were the first to get it right! Great music, great writing...very moving.

I'm glad you're still out there kickin' butt, symbolman! And the DU researchers are EVERY BIT as good as Josh Marshall!! In fact, his research is used in our research, which is why the internet is MORE effective than the news media....we all get to link to one another's blogs/research! We don't have to wait six months while someone researches a topic and finally reports on it! We're right in there with the research. That's why the news media should be VERY AFRAID of the internet...they simply cannot compete. The thing is, we don't WANT them to compete...we want THEIR research, and we'll add to it! If only.....

We've gotten to the bottom of some very nasty dealings by some very powerful people, and we still do it every day here on DU. Very complicated networks, with the same sleazy players, on a global scale. And we call it like it is, whether it's Dem or repub. That "take no prisoners" attack got to the bottom of Plame, 9/11, Sibel Edmonds, Carlyle, electronic voting, the recall election in California, and the neutering of Kevin Shelley (Sec. of State), AQ Khan's network, and we all knew about the Franklin/AIPAC affair LONG before anyone else paid any attention to it. Our researchers, hand-in-hand with other blogs & forums, have been WAY ahead of the press. Plus, we've had FLASH to go along with it, that beats anything the mainstream has ever come up with.

:kick::kick::kick:

[philly_bob]

12. And I owe an apology for being snarky that 'Fitzmas' didn't come at Christmas

I used it in a post once as an example of how sometimes DU and blogosphere news and analysis is not reliable.

Fitzmas came true -- is coming true. Just not by the deadline implied by Fitzmas.