Looks like Tina Brown and Gorman aren't the only clueless media-bots out there - just look at this senseless batch of word poop from David Shaw of the LA Times:

BLOGGERS require no journalistic experience. All they need is computer access and the desire to blog. There are other, even important differences between bloggers and mainstream journalists, perhaps the most significant being that bloggers pride themselves on being part of an unmediated medium, giving their readers unfiltered information. And therein lies the problem.

Oh, that's just too rich. So david - what exactly are your journalistic qualifications? You hung around J-school for a few years taking easy classes and getting drunk? After which you got a job with a paper that can barely spell editor, much less do any actual editing? Why do I say that? Well, look at his example, presumably fact checked by that brilliant editing team he scorns people like me for not having:

Equally irresponsible, it was yet another blogger — if he can be so characterized — Matt Drudge, who first posted the erroneous story last year alleging that Kerry had had an affair with a young intern.

Drudge may be more a tipster and a gossip than a true blogger, but I see him as part of the same solipsistic, self-aggrandizing journalist-wannabe genre, and I don't think the reporter's shield law should be available to anyone so quick to disseminate inaccurate information, with no editors to examine or restrain him.

Great example except.... Drudge is not a blogger. And you can climb down off your high horse about editorial restraint - it certainly didn't help CBS news any in the infamous 60 Minutes story last fall - and the only reason the NY Times didn't get similarly caught is that CBS decided to run ahead of them. Yeah David - editors are a perfect check. That explains the near perfection of MSM reportage. And don't even get me started on the "technology reporting" the papers do. Sheesh, talk about lack of facts masquerading as stories. Then there's this lovely bit of crap:

Reporters in 31 states, including California, as well as Washington, D.C., are protected by shield laws. Most of those laws -- and California's in particular -- provide more protection than does the 1st Amendment itself. That's why the Bush administration is pursuing its cases in federal court, where state shield laws don't apply. That's also why many journalists -- and several congressmen -- are actively seeking a federal shield law.

I strongly favor such a law, and in this climate we have to be careful about when and under what circumstances we apply and assert the journalist's privilege. If the courts allow every Tom, Dick and Matt who wants to call himself a journalist to invoke the privilege to protect confidential sources, the public will become even less trusting than it already is of all journalists.

Let's just start a "registered school of journalists" then, and everyone who wants to be one has to go there and get a badge. That will make it so much simpler to figure out who the superior folks (like Shaw there) are, and who us peons are. It will be far easier to stay in our place that way too. Do you guys get to wear the special badges, or do we?