I was in DC much of this week, speaking at and attending different future of journalism summits. There were many things I agreed with and others, profoundly disagreed. Top disagreement: “Bloggers give great opinions. But they are not reporters.” Um-then what do you call this?

The Hillman Foundation has announced their 2009 honorees, including, Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel/Firedoglake.

“Just last month, Marcy Wheeler made the front page of the New York Times after she became the first person to notice that a newly-released Justice Department memo revealed that Khalid Sheik Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times in one month. Last year, Wheeler’s groundbreaking investigative work on the CIA leak case also made the front page of the Times. Her early and powerful reporting about malfeasance by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales helped to propel him out of the Bush administration. And her live blogging from the Scooter Libby trial in 2007 is widely regarded as one of the seminal moments in online journalism. Wheeler also produced outstanding coverage of the American auto industry crisis. Combining her background in the industry with a deep commitment to American workers, her depth of analysis was unrivaled.”

The lines between blogging and journalism will continue to blur and you’re going to find more and more bloggers taking on independent reporting. Why? Because it responds to the needs of their audiences, helps them gain recognition/impact when they want to pontificate and drive action. It is also in direct response to perceived poor reporting and cut backs by the establishment media.

Jane Hamher of Firedoglake is fundraising to bring Marcy and another reporter on full-time at FDL. Check it out and give a couple bucks.

P.S. We talk a lot about the blurring lines b/w journalism and blogging in our book, Beyond The Echo Chamber, coming out this fall!!!

The right wing built up a powerful echo chamber over the last few decades. In contrast, progressives have built dynamic networks of information and communication over the last few years.

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. “Basically,” he says, “it’s just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely.”

But some of the journalists who participate in the online discussion say — off the record, of course — that it has been a great help in their work. On the record, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin acknowledged that a Talk of the Town piece — he won’t say which one — got its start in part via a conversation on JournoList. And JLister Eric Alterman, The Nation writer and CUNY professor, said he’s seen discussions that start on the list seep into the world beyond.

Oh my god–Toobin used a conversation he was involved in as the genesis for a news piece? Stop the presses! Liberal Media Conspiracy Alert!

Seriously folks, how do you think half of journalism, reporting and analysis occurs? From conversations, information sharing, bouncing ideas off each, arguments and more. J-list is great for all those things. It’s not an “echo chamber.” No one on this list serve is telling anyone what to write about. No one is planning out how talking points are going to be distributed and bombard the public from all angles.

The list serve is just a small, small example of how today’s media system works. It’s a network. There are private and public networks forming, connecting, dissolving, and reforming every day. Some are sustained, others serve their purpose and disappear. It’s part of the media ecology that we now live in for people to connect, share, and discuss. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s human nature.

In this case, J-List is a private conversation among as diverse a group you can get of political journalists, professors and bloggers. And if I find them too inside-the-beltway one day, I turn to my other networks: Facebook, feminist list servs, and Twitter to get other perspectives and ideas. Progressives have been much more quick to adapt and integrate these different online networks into their daily lives, making it seem far less sinister than others would perceive them.

Calderone, of course, hits up the right for their take on J-list and gets a quote from “Michael Goldfarb, a former McCain staffer and conservative blogger.”

“There is nothing comparable on the right. E-mail conversations among bloggers, journalists and experts on our side tend to be ad hoc,” Goldfarb said. “The JournoList thing always struck me as a little creepy.”

Creepy?? The right created, built, and implemented the very definition of a political echo chamber over the last few decades. That’s creepy. Maybe the fact that they don’t talk to one another and share ideas is one of the major reasons the GOP is in a state of collapse. Maybe they should try it out. These are smart people, surely they can figure out how to set up a google group list serve, right?

Amanda Michel has written a great piece for Columbia Journalism Review [I am a CJR devotee!] about her experience as the Director of Off The Bus, a pro am (also known as citizen journalism) site that was launched and housed at Huffington Post. Off The Bus was a pretty interesting case study of the triumphs and tribulations of getting a successful citizen journalism effort across the ground. Michel has a pretty honest and reflective piece on what worked, what needed to be improved, and lessons learned for other media outlets. I pulled some excerpts that I think are particularly pertinent for progressive media folks to start thinking about citizen journalism. Those are right after my quick arguments about WHY progressive media needs to start thinking about pro am/citizen journalism.
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Just a heads up that Jessica and I are at the We Media Conference in sunny Miami. You can follow our real time notes on twitter. Follow us at @tracyvs and @beyondbroadcast. You can also follow the hashtag twitter #wemedia. We’ll also try to do some lengthier blog posts about the (hopefully) amazing ideas and content that comes from conversations we have with brilliant media minds and from the conversation itself.