The Houston Chronicle amazes me yet again, in writing on blogs and bloggers and failing to mention a single one from Texas. Sure, the article was written by someone from their DC Buereau, but you’d think you could localize that a tad.
The article includes this phrase, though:

As the political world prepares for this year’s congressional elections and the 2008 presidential race, a cadre of highly influential bloggers — unfiltered commentators who use the Internet to keep their dispatches snappy, fresh and free of charge — have the potential to revolutionize the electoral process.

Sadly, not a single mention of a Texan. Even Houston’s own Greg and Kuff were left out of the mix. Of course it is much easier for the MSM to simply latch onto DailyKOS and the “really big guys,” while ignoring virtually everyone else. Of course, that’d be like living in Dallas and getting every drop of your news from the New York Times. You’d be informed, but you’d miss a hell of a lot that’s going on in your own back yard.

Blogs are quickly becoming the topic “de jour” in the media. There is even a blog that tracks the mentions of blogs, blogging and bloggers in the media, Blogging Jouranlist.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks (literally the only sports team aside from the Dallas Stars I care anything about), had a good deal to say on blogging the other day at his “Blog Maverick” site:

A blog is media. Its a platform to communicate that can reach anyone within reach of an internet connection.  Ive been writing this blog for more than 2 years and that time has allowed me to recognize the difference between a blog and traditional media and why the two will never successfully meet.

In traditional media, you are first defined by your medium. There is some constraint to the physical or digital definition of the medium the content is delivered on or by, that for the most part determines how you are perceived

Exactly. The “traditional media” (we call them the “MSM,” in blogger terms, Mr. Cuban, just an FYI) would make people think bloggers are a bunch of recluses who sit in our garages all day and make this stuff up while drinking Yoohos and eating pizza if we didn’t occasionally elude to our real lives here on our blogs.

Why? Because we’re a threat. An article in the Arizona Republic last week actually pointed that out, to a degree, hilighting changes in major media coverage that have been spurred along by bloggers.

Right here in Texas, we bloggers even have our own “BlogCritic,” of sorts, in Robyn Hadly who writes “Out There” for Texas Weekly.
At her blog, Capitol Crowd, Robyn seems to take the opposite view of blogs that Cuban does, lamenting that we just aren’t original:

What drives me crazy about blogs is they often just quote each other and they’re just quoting opinion, not fact. It’s very much a rumor mill, so you have to seach hard to find where the info really started. I’ve tried to sort blogs into “conservative” and “liberal” folders, but not everything fits neatly into those categories.

While a lot of bloggers seem to be self-absorbed and convinced that they’re “saving democracy” through their reporting/writing, the ones I like best are purely informational or so over-the-top in their postings that they’re hysterically funny. Satire rules the blogosphere.

At the risk of pissing off the lady who’s driving traffic to us, I beg to disagree. While bloggers do a significant amount of opinion work, you really cannot consider much of what we do strictly opinion. I don’t know all of the blogs she’s reading, but often times, we go into greater depth on certain stories than the MSM does. There were no major dailies in Texas that examined the TTRC plans with the fine-tooth-comb that Texas bloggers did. We literally tore the hell out of it like a bulldog with a feather pillow covered in gravy.
What we aren’t though, is a bunch of lapdogs. In her column not long ago, Molly Ivins wrote:

As I occasionally survey the pack of sycophantic Shih Tzus in the Washington press corps, wriggling on their bellies to kiss the feet of those in power, I feel plumb discouraged about the future of journalism.

The future is right here. You’ll note Rick Perry doesn’t have too many Shih Tzuz rolling on their bellies in the Texas Blogsphere.

But, Ms. Ivins shares Ms. Hadley’s view of the Blogsphere as well:

The bloggers seem to me to be breaking more toward opinion than journalism, which I think is a shame.

A noble exception is Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, which is completely on top of its chosen topics. Of course, Stone practiced opinion journalism, as do I, but with him the hard reporting always came first.

I have no objections to anyone breaking into the guild of journalism without the credentials of journalism school or experience on a print daily (though I highly recommend especially the latter). I do object to those who jump from political hackery to flackery and expect respect. If you can’t cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not cover a presidential campaign.

I don’t know how many of us in the Texas Blogsphere have real-world journalism experience in some form or fashion. I do, I believe Charles Kuffner does, and I’m not so sure about some of the rest of us. But, I do disagree with both Hadley and Ivins about bloggers (as a whole) breaking more toward opinion than journalism. In my view, at least a majority of do about half and half. I probably do more stuff that could be considered journalism than opinion (and I say that because I try to put newsy, factual stuff in most of my posts as opposed to just opinions) than some, and others do far more opinion than “journalism.”

The fact remains, though, that Bloggers, especially in Texas, are fast becoming a force to be recokened with.