Online Media Cultist

There’s a firestorm a-brewin’ over a Wall Street Journal piece that apparently – at least according to old school and (love ‘em or hate ‘em) A List bloggers such as Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington – gets the history of blogging completely wrong.

Note to the mainstream media: probably makes sense to at least check in with some of the blogosphere’s important figures to at the least create some balance in the reportage. It doesn’t have to be Scoble or Arrington; I’ve no doubt there are countless well respected and long time bloggers out there who would be delighted to give their own personal take about an often ill defined craft.

Scoble pulls the trigger on the obvious but nonetheless stinging rebuttal:

I thought mainstream journalists were supposed to get it right and leave the inaccuracies and all that to us bloggers.

Rosie O’Donnell is leaving The View. Apparently she couldn’t come to a contractual agreement with ABC and therefore will leave the show in mid-June.

Why do I know this? Because of the screaming headlines all across the major mainstream media Interwebs.

ABC News, on its bright red Breaking News banner: Rosie O’Donnell Will Leave “The View” In Mid-June After Failing To Reach New Contract Agreement

Fox News, top story, above-the-fold: ABC Ends Rosie ‘View’

CNN, number one Top Story: Rosie O’Donnell leaving ‘The View’

MSNBC and CBS News also run the story above-the-fold.

I’ll ask my question again, but in a slightly different way: why do I know about this breaking development in the Rosie O’Donnell saga? I take it that the angle is that Rosie is apparently a “raunchy” and “controversial” figure, so therefore updating the public on developments in her career are, for these news organizations, paramount in importance.

But it’s not very important, is it? The View is a daytime talk show where four female hosts gab about the news of the day and occasionally interview someone. It’s light infotainment.

That all of the online outlets for the big television news networks chose to run this story loud and proud – particularly as breaking news on ABC – is telling. Sadly, it’s infotainment coverage of an infotainment television program presented as the-most-important-thing-you-should-take-note-of-thissecond.

No wonder why so many people now turn to the blogosphere and online independent news sources first for news these days.