You are correct, I don’t preview and in my haste there are often spelling and grammar errors in my posts.You got me.

Let’s focus on your mistakes. I am not a Pajama’s Media correspondent. Just as someone who writes a letter to the editor is not a journalist. Roger wouldn’t include me in his collection of bloggers because of my sloppy writing. Especially since I don’t have a blog. Your ignorance of what Roger is putting together and the fact that you do not know the difference between someone who writes a comment on a blog and a blogger is typical of many Journalists comments on the blogosphere.They don’t know the basics and they make ignorant comments.

Your industry is losing customers to other forms of media. One of the reasons is the arrogant attitude you show. My post has numerous spelling errors. Your post’s are little more then “your fat and your mother is ugly.” Go ahead, keep calling bloggers pajama wearing cat food eating kooks. Keep repeating cliches that you borrowed from other writers. Keep calling your customers stupid. Watch as every year as more and more newspapers fold and “Journalists” find out that they can’t get their novels published and they have to get a job outside of journalism. Will Pajamas Media work? Who knows. But if you will read your own buisness section of your paper you will find that your industry is in deep trouble. Companies that survive listen to people outside their circle and to their customers. Industries that become shadows of their past greatness huddle in a closed circle and complain about how people are so stupid that they do not read us anymore and ignore our brilliant idea’s.

I am going to keep my final point very simple. I still purchase and read 2 newspapers a day. One liberal. One conservative. Your industry needs people like me.It is how they make money. Go ahead and ignore what is happening to your industry and watch as it continues to shrink. Lash out at people who don’t follow the party line and lick your boots. Call us stupid long enough and watch the subscription rate sink more and more each year. Yes, that brilliant! Great business plan. You are a wise man.

Boy, you DO have time to burn.

It would be better spent boning up on your spelling — unless, of course, a Pajamas Media correspondent doesn’t have to bother with, you know, spelling.

Have a nice life.

One more thought. As much as some journalist’s like to portray themselves as practioners of a sacred art they still need to make a buck, they still need to sell their papers.As stated above if Hewitt tried to drag the reporter into conversations that had nothing to do with their story the reporter could have just responded with “I came on your show to ask you some questions regarding your work with Roberts, these other issues have nothing to do with the story.’ No problem there. Lets discuss protection of the “process”. Give me a break. The reporter was not likely to have asked Hewitt about some amazing scoop because all the info in the memo’s was out for all reporters to look out and Hewitt was a minor player.

So why bother doing the interview with Hewitt if the info was minor. Because it is free advertising on a nationwide show.The newspaper buisness is not in such great shape that it can turn down any opportunity for increased exposure.Papers often give their papers out for free to increase subscriptions. As much as you would like to think that anyone who listens to Radio is a knuckle dragging moron some actually read newspapers and by going on the radio they would have at least increased the number of hits to their on line sites for that story. More hits means better ad revenues. Some might even subscribe to the paper. More subscriptions means more ad revenue. More ad revenue means less firings, more hirings. The fact that the reporter missed a chance for free advertising in a proffesion that is struggling to retain readers is stupid from the start. ‘But Hewitt will critique it”. If he doesn’t like the story he will do that anyway. The reporters missed a chance to get info, even if it was minor, free advertising, and maybe some increased readership. The only possible danger is possible loss of control of the qoutes. And since all reporters want the entire truth out in the general public having anything that Hewitt could say out a day or two early would cost the reporter nothing.

I get the L.A. Times and the O.C. Register daily. Hewitt is always telling his listners to cancel the Times and I don’t because I don’t follow orders from him anymore then I listen to orders from the Times. I like newspapers. I don’t trust the news reports in the Times as much as I did because I have read to many articles that had qoutes that were truncated in a obvious attempt to alter the speakers words and that were overly selective in their presentation. Not for space, but for an political agenda.

Your job may be secure and you may have not have to worry about making money. But your industry is having serious problems and the arrogant snotty holier then thou attitude you show doesn’t help. Companies that call their customers stupid and blame their losses on anything other then poor performance by themselves don’t do that well. Research it.

A fool or a liar. Thank you for the options.There are more sections to a paper then their News section. I enjoy parts of the Times, give credence to some of what is printed, and have learned that some of it is thinly veiled agit-prop. Where I once assumed that all the Times writers were “just the facts” journalists who kept their agenda’s at home I have observed that many do not. I do “value’ some of it.

Since this is your proffesion I understand that you are sensitive to alternative forms of media. Some radio is blather. Some is not. Some Blogs are simply crazed personel rants. some do a better job of transmitting news and reflecting on the news the papers do. Just as i do not put my faith in any political party I also don’t swallow every word that is printed on paper.

When I listen to Hewitt I know he is a Republican party stalwart so I take his political news with a grain of salt. But he is open in about where he is coming from while many(not all) reporters proclaim neutrality but a close examination of their work shows otherwise. Even when the NYT hired the ombudsmen and he stated that on inspection there was an obvious cultural bias in how the Times reported it’s news there were still denoal s and claims of strict neutrality.

Newspapers are under siege, thereprofits are crumbling and their subscriber base is shrinking and many that still buy the paper ignore large sections of what is printed. I still read the 85 to 95 percent of the paper every day. But I don’t swallow it whole, and the smug attitude you show by insulting a customer of your trade who still buys your product but is discussing how it could be improved is the exact reason why so many people are dropping the newspaper habit.

I have a suggestion. Even if you think my views on the newspaper trade is wrong I still purchase it and your proffession doesn’t have the luxury of pissing off many more customers. You may ask the recently fired LAT employees about the joys of finding another job. I stated that hewitt was more then likely a minor part of the story and but the reporter wanted info from him. He could have got it. He or she could ask the questions, if Hewitt decided to bloviate they could calmly ask the question again and if he was non responvive he/she could simply ignore him. It is the ‘my way or the highway’ approach of many reporters that is why things are looking so bad for newspapers today. If you think that they do not continue you watch papers fold. I have never been one whothinks that the blogs will replace newspapers, nor do I hope that they do. But ignore the reality of your trade and you will be in for a rude suprise.

Buying a newspaper and saying you don’t value the information that it provides makes no sense whatsoever. Either you like to waste money, or you’re lying.

If I were working on a story and wanted to interview Hugh Hewitt for it, and he said, well, I’ll only do this if I can broadcast the interview live, I would suggest an alternative — that he wait to broadcast the interview until after the story was published. In that way, Hugh Hewitt would have the transparency (a more accurate term would be ego stroking) that he claims to want, and if my interview elicits good information, I get to publish it first.

I would wager the reporters aren’t afraid of transparency. They just thought Hugh Hewitt and his ego isn’t worth the bother. His connection with Judge Roberts was tenuous and long ago, and in order to speak to him about Roberts, they have to serve as the dancing bear on his radio show.

I work as a reporter, and I used to get asked often to go on radio shows. My answer was the same — people who blather on radio shows, and who listen to the blather, either don’t have enough to do, or they’re getting paid to put out the blather. I wasn’t asking for money, I just didn’t want to waste my time.

Your post’s are honest and they do give some perspective on the needs of a journalist. But when Goldstein refused Hewitt he was not forcing the reporter to do all interviews live. It was just this one. I assume she wanted some backround info on Roberts or she wanted Hewitt to respond to some memos that his name was on. i am sure that some people who will be interviewed would not want a tape of it. But the reluctance to do one live is a sign to me of the desire to keep control of the process.And a fear of the transparecy that the press often pontificates about. There is no FOIA when it comes to journalism.

I know there are many fine journalists who have high standards and strive to present a honest representation of the truth when they do a story. But I have been reading the LA Times every day for 37 years. I was once a straight ticket democratic voter and even though I am more conservative today I still pay for the paper every day. What I am about to say is not about their editorial page. It’s their front page. With the rise of the web and the ability to read whole speech’s and to get a wide variety of takes on the news I constantly find how often the Times news division cuts off qoutes to change the meaning of what the speaker said, how they intentionally leave out information that would give give more perspective. It happens constantly. So it makes me think there is more reasons then just protecting a scoop for why there was the refusal by 2 reporters to interview Hugh, more then likely a minor player in the Roberts story, and that losing the flexibility to use qoutes selectively to fit the narrative is one of the reasons.

This is just one example. It was a Iraq story. The Times field reporter was interviewed on the McNeil Leherer hour by Gwen Ifil. It was a year or two ago but so I don’t have the specifics but I believe it was about a mosque shooting. The field reporter gave a balanced, this is what I observed, report. He said there was firing from the mosque, that as far as he could tell the fire was initiated from the mosque and that the troops seemed to respond in a reasonable manner. he was not pro soldier, these guys are perfect and the other guys are scum. He was neutral and he just reported what he had witnessed and what he had dug out later.

The next day I open my Times and the story is on the front page. The first thing I noticed was that two other names had been addded to the story. What was written in the Times was completely different then what the reporter who was at the site had said on T.V. Some of the facts were similar but they had been spun to paint a decidely non-neutral take on the story. It wasn’t subtle. And the changes were not about facts that were away from the scene. Either the reporter decided to change his story, which i doubt, or his editors and rewrite people decided that the story didn’t paint the picture that they wanted.

I love newspapers and I will still buy the Times. But I have very little respect ot trust for what they print on their news pages. Some of the writers play it straight but the amount of agenda journalism is staggering.

Kevin Peters

You managed to avoid answering the question of why anyone should believe what you and your source feel like sharing with us.

As for your relationships; if I discovered that my doctor had a cozy relationship with pharmacutical companies, much cozier than his relationship with me, then he would cease to be my doctor in very short order.

If I discovered my lawyer had found information I needed to know while representing me in a case, and conspired with the opposing lawyer to keep it from me, then not only would he cease to be my lawyer, he would face disciplinary charges from the state bar, and possibly a civil suit.

Personally, I’d never believe anything I heard from you, given the attitude you display here. I make my own determinations as to what online content I believe and what I discount. I don’t cede that control to any blogger. If I know someone to be fairly reliable I may not always bother to dig too deeply into the background, but I should certainly be able to do so if I wished.

Enjoy your golf.

Hi Narniaman. What I was primarily responding to there was Roger’s idea to make available (or require) that all PJMedia bloggers make the complete content of all interviews available. (If I have anything to do with it (and, along with my colleagues, it seems as if I will), PJ will always have a link so that you can, in Glenn Reynolds’ famous words, “read the whole thing.” )

As for downloading costs, hey, there may be a way to do it–it’s not really clear what kind of PJMedia infrastructure will exist. My thinking is about a small blogger getting by on a cheap account suddenly being flooded with massive download costs on a hot video/audio. Most of us would welcome it, but some cannot be so blithe about costs. A PJMedia-run advertiser-sponsored warehouse for such items is something that has occured to me as a good solution–and as you say, they’re out there already.

And I wasn’t thinking so much about reporters not willing to be recorded for later, unfiltered broadcast–the Goldstein episode notwithstanding– as I was about sources.

One funny thing you learn as a reporter is that many people will freeze up in the sight of a recorder (or the request over the phone for one) but are much less intimidated by hand-written note taking. Honestly, I think part of the reason is that the source can always say I got it wrong! But it’s also just a gut reaction at some reptilian level.

Apparently reptiles had problems with recorders too.

Anyway, really, the driving range is calling….

Well, unless you are from the planet Argon in the Mezulac system–that is to say, unless you are an alien rather than a human being–reporters and sources develop relationships along with everybody else in the world.

What does the public get from all of this? Better, more accurate stories, generated for example by a reporter and a source in a mutually trusting relationship. Can this be abused? Of course. Is there any human system that can’t? Let me know.

Of course Source A must prove his trustworthiness to me-why would I trouble my readers with information from Source A if I don’t first establish his trustworthiness? This is very basic stuff. Blogs operate on exactly the same principle when linking to….trusted sources. If a particular link is from an unknown or potentially insane source, the wise blogger will say Attention: the following link may primarily be useful to lunatics. Granted, some MSM stories would benefit from such a disclaimer.

In the example provided–in the best case–source A has prevented me from misinforming the public that Country X hates the U.S. aviation proposal. If source A has screwed with me–and Country X really did hate it–then lesson learned and my readers benefit because I won’t use that poopy-pants in the future.

And as far as withholding information is concerned, you can play for the long game or the short game. If I burn my source and immediately disclose that Country X is all about the soybean agreeement, yes, I have informed the public–once, and no more, from that source, who will never speak to me again. I–and my readers–may have one good day, sort of like the occasional Instalanche. And then my source will dry up, and likely other sources since Source A will not be shy about telling his own trusted colleagues about how I burned him.

But if I withhold the info temporarily, Source A becomes a font of information for me and my readers, who live happily ever after.

So time for golf, and enough with the soybeans.

I think you might be missing the point here.

No one is proposing that all conversations between a reporter and the potential MSM victim be recorded. . . . only that a mechanism be in place so #1) the potential MSM victim does have the liberty of recording what is actually said, and #2) the MSM victim has an avenue for publicizing the actual conversation should the need arise.

In your hypothetical example, Source A would not be required to immediately publish the details of your recorded conversation.

However, if you did something to betray your “trust” — source A could immediately have the recording of your conversation put on a recognized site so all the world could judge between what he said and what you wrote.

You also wrote:

“Maybe not so easily. For one thing, not everyone will consent to being recorded–and even fewer may consent to being recorded and having that recording posted for all the world to hear. And in a really fun interview, a source may ask to go off-the-record for a moment–can we delete that without being j’accused?”

May I suggest that if the reporter doesn’t want to be recorded while he is interogating his potential victim, maybe he shouldn’t be interogating?

And as far as the cost of downloading audio/video — it doesn’t seem to be a problem for most internet sites that specialize in downloads. For instance, have you ever visited “StupidVideos.com”? (I’m not intending to give them a plug, just to use as an example.) They have loads of videos that you can download for free, and seem to be able to sustain their operation with advertising.