Hankins v. Rutherford: Too Civil/Lacking of Bloodshed To Be Entertaining

The minor tremors about the Arkansas blogotwitterspheres today were regarding a column published by Arkansas Business publisher Jeff Hankins on the omnipresence of new media and the subsequent rebuttal by blogger Blake Rutherford of Blake's Sentient Bull Dozer.

Hankins says that media is now everywhere thanks to these meddling kids and their blogs and their twitters and their pop music. Rutherford retorts, "Yeah, so?"

In short, they seem to agree with one another about the viability and actuality of new media being on the prowl, but disagree on whether or not this is necessarily a causal "pitfall." Rutherchevy says that people have been spreading rumors and traditional news outlets have been getting it wrong for quite sometime, and to blame new media for those conventions is downright erroneous.

He also points out that it's a vast generalization to say that bloggers wouldn't correct themselves if they admittedly got a scoop wrong, which is true. But come to think of it, I don't see a lot of corrections made, unless it's regarding a source, quoted statement, or something else supplementary, rarely affecting the entire body of the post. But maybe the blogs I frequent are rarely wrong (ARKANSAS BLOGOSPHERE ELITISM! FIST PUMP!).

There's more agreeing going on here than not to really say this is a debate. As I say this, I'm hoping that a shirtless Hankins is storming down to the Bowen Law School, kicking open the door to Rutherford's law class to open a can in front of his students, ya know, to spice this narrative up a bit, but in case that doesn't pan out, it seems that both made good points about the whole state of affairs, without stomping each others' toes. Cue to the cheesy Full House electric guitar, denoting a valuable lesson to be learned.

Hankins is right: The media in its new form is now everywhere, unfettered by the old media's rules and governance. Rutherford is right: That doesn't mean that old media is infallible, not that Hankins was claiming it to be.

I actually spoke on an SPJ panel about the rift or symbiosis of old and new media. I really believe that the cream will rise to the top, meaning credible bloggers are more likely to be carried on and be successful than those that are known to spew bias and misinformation to prove its own point or attain a cheap, non-informative goal.

I think that credible blogs do indeed hold themselves to standards. We all know the credible blogs around town. While I certainly see bias in the analysis, very rarely are they flat out wrong about the events. In fact, I don't recall any. In double fact, I recall one such blog — Max Brantley's not-very-originally titled "Arkansas Blog" — getting information regarding the no-smiling law on our driver's licenses that turned out to be bogus and through investigation — huh? fact checking? on a blog?! — and then corrected it, shedding light on the subject through good ole fashioned journalistic checking of sources.

But "citizen journalism" is here to stay, anyway. It ought to. At it's very core, all journalism, conventional and otherwise, ought to at the very least be geared toward the citizenry.