Jay Rosen takes a useful look at Journalism & Big Media (or MSM – Main Stream Media to some). I like this:

• The real job of journalism is to help make the public lfe of the nation work well.

• For journalists, the rise of citizen comment on the Internet should be something to celebrate and learn from.

• The bias discourse has descended into meaninglessness, which doesn’t meant the press isn’t trapped by its own preconceptions.

• The survival of Big Media is not critical, the survival of journalism is. There’s a big difference between those two.

• Bloggers "who care about facts and ideas," and there are many of those, should be wary of the Orwellians on their own side, who are themselves engaged in propaganda– the charge they are most likely to hurl at others.

Jayson Blair, who brought down the NY Times Howell Raines comments on Rathergate:

It?s really sad to see what?s happening to Dan Rather and CBS, and no one knows like me what its like to lose their credibility. I would give anything to have it back. If I could turn back time, I would.

The fact that no members of the Main Stream Media (MSM) contacted Blair for comments speaks volumes.

There’s been no shortage of discussion regarding the apparent forged documents that 60 minutes used last week on a Bush National Guard Story. Jay Rosen has written a “stark message” for legacy media here.
I lived in San Francisco during the 1989 “pretty big one”, the Loma Prieta earthquake. I remember reading about this, and frankly feeling repulsed at the image of a Rather in a limo next to the flattened I-880 expressway stating this:

Some time after dark, a long white stretch limo pulled up beside the remaining structure in West Oakland. The back door opened and Dan Rather got out. He pulled down his tie, rolled up his sleeves, mussed his hair a bit so it might look as if he?d actually been somewhere doing something, looked into the camera and said, ?We?re here in San Francisco, where the freeway ??

When, in fact, he was in Oakland….

Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action – John Boyd’s OODA Loop applies to military as well as business and now media issues. Yesterday, the Minneapolis based powerlineblog used the power of the net to raise questions about a Wednesday CBS News/60 Minutes story. By the end of the day Thursday, the basis of CBS’s story was in doubt, as John Podhoretz explains.
This is truly a new day for citizen information (likely resulting in a variety of outcomes). Years ago, the only “check” on old media would have been a letter to the editor. Today, web writers (for better or worse) operate at a much higher cycle rate than the MSM (Main Stream Media) or old media types. This is the real change: the OODA loop is light years faster than the pre-internet days. Lileks and instapundit have more.
Counterpoint: The Daily Kos. This is funny….

Lara Logan demonstrates the risks of a true journalist: reporting with special forces in Afghanistan on the killing of the Taliban’s “Billy the Kid”.
Interesting interview.

Scott Woolley on Broadcast Bullies:

For decades the radio industry has crushed incipient competitors by wielding raw political muscle and arguments that are at once apocalyptic and apocryphal. Radio station owners, who formed the National Association of Broadcasters in 1923, have won laws and regulations that have banned, crippled or massively delayed every major new competitive technology since the first threat emerged in 1934: FM radio.

Speaking of Old Media Empires, J.D. Lasica interviews Jack ?I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.? Valenti

Mary Schmich is spot on, as she eats away:

Should the media covering the Republican National Convention attend a million-dollar party thrown by the city of New York and TimeWarner in a spectacular shopping center in Columbus Circle?
Should we chow down on endless free food from some of New York’s priciest restaurants?
Should we gobble up the free Republican National Committee Media Welcome gift booklet–the one that gives us discounts at Borders, Bose and Tumi, and complimentary espresso in the cigar lounge at Davidoff and a free traditional shave with shaving cream purchase at the Art of Shaving?
Should we accept freebies that on ordinary days we would understand were as forbidden as plagiarism?
Should we do this even though we report mockingly on the luxury partying of the political parties?
Should we shrug off our own conspicuous consumption, paid for by someone else, as part of doing business?
Well, it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s done.
Thousands of media types, swirling free martinis and chattering up a cyclone, swarmed through the shops of the towering new TimeWarner Center Saturday night.
Oh, look, there’s Wolf Blitzer. And some CEO of something. And that woman–isn’t she somebody?

This seems to be related (via instapundit)