Like I've mentioned before, I no longer aspire to be a journalist (though, with this economy, who really knows what any college student will do after he or she graduates?). However, back in high school, I loved journalism. There was one thing that frustrated me though. My school paper's advisor always tried to talk us out of doing stories that were controversial. And, if we were allowed to do them, they had to be "fair and balanced, showing both sides equally." Well, sometimes, in the real world, some sides are blatantly wrong and don't deserve equal covered to defend themselves. This is definitely the case in TPM's attorney scandal.
I think that this is the key argument in the story about TPM is this paragraph:
"The Internet hasn't improved everything but it sure has done wonders for the cause of investigative reporting. Good muckraking, after all, is driven by the thing that is missing from so much of today's "fair and balanced" objective newspapers, and that is passion -- the passion of people who can reach more readers more quickly and more cheaply on the Web, the passion that is fueled by interaction with readers, and the passion of journalists or bloggers who want to work harder and faster because there are readers gobbling up their reporting as fast as they can dish it out."
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