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It's prime time for blogs on CNN's 'Inside Politics'
Mainstream media continue to be wary of Internet bloggers because the reporting and opinions on their Web sites are often not subject to journalistic checks and balances, such as editing and rules on sourcing.
But Jon Klein, a former CBS News producer who jumped to an Internet venture before being tapped to run CNN a few months ago, says that there's no sense in ignoring the "blogosphere," which is why he has created a daily, four-minute segment on Inside Politics. "Inside the Blog," which kicked off Feb. 14, is the first daily segment on cable or network TV dedicated to people whose reporting and opinions appear on the Web. "We want to demystify blogging," Klein says. "We want to peel back all those layers and also do a reading of the blogs that our audience doesn't have the time to do." Klein chose Inside Politics for the segment "because obviously so much of the high-profile bloggers have a political bent on one side or the other," and coincidentally, he also had decided that there was little room for shoutfests on CNN talk shows. Now, every day unless there's breaking news, anchor Judy Woodruff turns the show over to CNN blog reporter Jacki Schechner and her colleague, political producer Abbi Tatton, who sit at computer screens and review who's talking about what on political weblogs. "Even when they comment on what seems to be the occasional absurdity of the blogs, the two look and sound deadly earnest," CBS Marketwatch columnist Jon Friedman wrote Friday. Schechner, a veteran blogger who worked at an entertainment Web site, pseudo.com, says mainstream media are beginning to take bloggers seriously — and the blogs welcome the recognition. "Any blogger who has been asked to appear on a show gets very excited about it, regardless of the show, and they love the mainstream media attention," Schechner says. Her segment "tries to explain what the political blogs are talking about. We try to take some from the right, the center and the left to give a full picture." Woodruff says that "not being a child of the Internet, I confess I was skeptical when Jon first suggested the segment. I viewed the blogs as pure opinion, no reporting. But I've come to see the segment as a tool for getting at a new, unpredictable and increasingly influential place on the political landscape." But, she says, "the one thing I'd like to see us do more of is explain who the bloggers are. We could tell more about who they are and where they get their information. The only thing stopping us from doing that now is time." Jeffrey Cole, who runs the Digital Center at the University of Southern California, calls CNN's new segment "an interesting idea." "Occasionally the blogs are the extra eyes and ears that can be on to something," he says, and "summarizing what the blogs are buzzing about provides good insight in- to current interests and developments." But, Cole says, the Internet also has its share of oddballs. Though they can be entertaining, "the key is that CNN not promote them to greater significance than their ideas deserve." Schechner and Tatton "don't treat bloggers as some kind of freak show at all. They take them very seriously," Klein says. "Bloggers are as multi-layered as any other source of debate or dialogue, and it's a mistake to write them off as one thing or another. "They are fertile ground for doing what good journalists do: find out who they are and what they are saying, and how accurate are the things that they're saying and how useful are the things that they provide."
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