A brief moment of fame
I finished reading Prof. Stephen D. Cooper's book "Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate."
The book isn't written for popular appeal. At its core, the book is a college textbook on media criticism -- a very good college textbook. However, good textbooks don't necessarily make for something that's going to fly off the shelves of your local Barnes & Noble.
Having pointed that out, if you're interested in some solid background and analysis on the various media scandals uncovered by the blogosphere in recent years, Cooper's book offers an excellent overview -- with Rathergate taking center stage.
Cooper describes how one post on the Free Republic message boards spread and grew until it took down one of America's big three anchors and resulted in a black eye for CBS.
Cooper doesn't just focus on the big scandals he also describes -- and offers real-world examples -- of the various types of media criticism. Perhaps the best example of this occurs on Page 193, when Cooper references this post by your favorite blogger.
Yes, this is called burying the lede.
So, there's my brief moment of fame -- about 2 1/2 pages in a college textbook -- albeit one that I think should become the main textbook for every media criticism class in the country.
One other interesting thing to note about Cooper's book: The vast majority of examples of media criticism in his book come from the right. Atrios and his ilk are mentioned in one brief case, but most of what passes for serious, substantive media criticism in the blogosphere originates on the right.
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[...] There’s lots of ways that the media can inject their biases into their coverage. Several years ago my case study of how The New York Times buried the lede in the the race for a Maryland Senate seat got me a mention in a media criticism textbook. [...]