Quote of the Day

“Most bloggers wouldn’t last an hour under the journalistic quality control that a newspaper demands.” -Liz Garrigan, Editor-in-Chief of the Nashville Scene, a paper that printed fabricated information about a mayoral candidate

UPDATE: More from Seany B.:

Be it not fact-checking the Gentry-Homeless shelter story, or the many negative, petty, and sarcastic comments made about political candidates in the paper (and this is not coming from me, this is from many of your readers who have been reading the Scene a whole lot longer than I have), I’m finding it hard to be lectured (not that it was directed at me, but because the general “blogger” title was used, I’ll use my blogger arrogance and pretend it was) about journalistic ethics. Now, I make negative and sarcastic comments on my blog, but I don’t ever pretend to be better or more important than I am (which is not very much at all).
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Personally, I’d love to have more free time to track stories, make phone calls to candidates, get quotes, find stories, etc…but like most bloggers, we do this in what little free time we have. That is perhaps why some bloggers get annoyed or pessimistic about paid journalists who will print one-sided, uncorroborated stories and then turn around and say we can’t live up to the journalistic standards set forth at those same papers. I think far less of what I do than some others do, [MONEY QUOTE] I just wish that journalists could sometimes have a little humility about their work as well.
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I just wish they would make up their mind if they want to be a serious, hard-hitting newspaper with journalistic standards; or an alt-weekly that blends opinion and humor with fact in much the same way the Daily Show and Blogs do.

UPDATE AGAIN: Clint Brewer, editor of the Nashville City Paper, wants local bloggers to tell him their opinion of “the Nashville blogging community’s sense of ethics when it comes to accurate regurgitation of the facts.” I argue that one cannot possibly give an informed opinion on the Nashville blogging community any more than they can give their opinion on the ethics of Tennessee Titans fans. Bloggers in this area, as in every area, are just people. There is no overarching credo or groupthink going on. My pointing this out means, according to Brewer, that I’m “throwing bombs.” I ask you: Is it really all that hard to get? Am I making absolutely no sense here? Brewer’s either being stubborn or he’s boneheaded. I hope it is the former.

 ANOTHER UPDATE: A journalist expounds on his vast esteem and training:

I worked at a publisher of sports magazines. My first job was a fact-checker. My training was this: “Everything that is a fact, you need to check. Everything. I don’t care if it is ‘Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs.’ Look up the spelling and the home run total.” And all those facts, no matter how mundane or obvious, got checked by three different people. That’s the essence of the journalistic quality control she talks about. It ain’t rocket surgery.

I have been published hundreds of times in countless newspapers. The most recent one was here, last week. I wrote that story. Every word. (Actually the opening sentence was changed to include the Sports Council, creating a grammatical error.) It was copied off a press release that I sent out. I have to write press releases in a manner that they can be copied, because in my experience, “quality control” and “journalistic standards” mean that if I don’t write a good release that can be copied verbatim, you’re not getting coverage. No one has ever called me on any press release I’ve ever sent out to question a fact. Never. Clarification, yes. Facts, no.