Perhaps, Glenn, your hard work and razor-sharp analysis is actually having an impact and is forcing these hacks into introspective self-examination of how their actions affect our country and world.

We can hope anyway.

Now that everyone is confessing, will anything change?

Hope springs eternal...

"acknowledges what they really do."

They sinned?

Well, that's how Vitter described it.

I've long held the opinion that The Politico was founded and encouraged to do what they do in order to purposely obfuscate the political environment and make money for its investors by doing so. Actually reporting political news accurately and completely isn't included in their business plan.

and they are all amplified in Kit Seeyle's bog post in the Times seen here:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/on-the-road-clintons-very-bad-day/

The tone is so passive, they are nothing but onlookers, when they are not fed information by those in authority they are lost. Didn't Hunter Thompson skewer this in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail? Is this attitude still around?

2 key passages:

"On the other end were editors who had seen a Drudge Report link to a New York Post item online. The Post was not with the traveling press — and apparently had a decent Internet connection."

"At the back of the plane, some in the media were playing a raucous game of roll-the-dice. In the middle, a clutch of reporters dissected the day’s events."

Nothing better to do, I'm sure. Drudge still rules their world. I fear they are too stupid to handle anything heavier.

"namely, that the establishment political journalists who dominate our news narrative (and those who run The Politico) fixate on meaningless, ephemeral trivialities in lieu of substantive reporting."

...namely, that Joan Walsh fixates on wedge issues, framed in a way that makes people mad in lieu of substantive reporting.

There is no doubt in my mind that the way Joan frames her posts is purposely divisive, meant to provoke anger from Obama supporters which leads to anger at us from Clinton supporters.

I thought it was Salon's mission to take the conversation further than Politico, Huffington Post, and Kos, and in fact, your pieces always do this.

I want to know that the editor of Salon isn't turning it into Gawker because she thinks that's where the money is.

...is no excuse.

I'm sure any professional on this board knows instinctively that should they spout fact-free information for so long and so loud, to so many--they would ruined.

It is high time the John Harris' of the world be brought low.

One of the more depressing aspects of the whole Hillary flap (shall we call it "bobbygate?") was the comment volume it generated. (I mean volume in both senses of the word.) Anyone who has an opinion on whether Obama victimized Hillary or Hillary victimized Obama chimed in and drove traffic skyward.

Even people who should know better, found themselves distracted. We have found it instructive in the past to compare the drivel coming out of our media as being like Jr. High School gossip but one of the defining states of Jr High school gossip is that intelligence is scorned.

At least in school though, the adults present would provide a counter-narrative that encouraged excellence.

Apparently in modern-day journalism, the adults aren't allowed at the table.

Way to highlight the hypocrisy, bro.

... "disappear with barely a whisper".... vs....."trivial stories"....

Why does the song roll around to rattle bolts loose in my head?

`Yankee Doodle doodles @ UT thinking of hopping on a pony?

`Stick feathers in a hat then call `um neocon macaroni salad?

Who don't want a article from the press that rings and rhymes?

I mean with real solid exposures. Oh. Truth. I request more.....

More what? More articles, salad, and wine vinegar on potatoes.

From:

One point you made that resonated with me as a journalistic matter is the danger that reporters might orient their thinking around chasing the needle, and measure their success by web traffic and links. Conscientious reporters and editors should resist this, and I believe we do.

To:

As leaders of a new publication, Politico's senior editors and I are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build traffic on the Web is to get links from other websites. The way to get links is to be first with news -- sometimes big news, sometimes small -- that drives that day's conversation.

I guess the only question is whether this confession by Harris signals acceptance of a problem he knows needs correction, in which case he might actually try to steer his virtual rag to do some real reporting and ignore the trivial bullshit, or whether this signals a surrender to the Forces of Drudge, which means the relentless pursuit of trivial crap will only get worse (yeah, it's possible).

As the Most Cynical Man In America, you can guess where my money is going...

I wonder if there is a link between the emergence of junk journalism and the mind numbing rubbish that is constantly dished up on television, posing of course as entertainment. Perhaps a significant proportion of the population has reached the stage where 20 seconds on a single meaningless item of “news” is all their atrophied intellects can process.

Because Joan Walsh is the editor of Salon, I always interpret her pieces as "editorials", and not unbiased journalism. The reason you may be confused about this is that her editorials are closer to real journalism than most of the pieces at sites like Politico.

The lazy journalism that has blurred the lines between editorials and reporting seems to be the root of the problem here. How can this problem be solved when a generation of journalists haved been trained under such skewed values?

I wouldn't go that far. Let's just say that there is significant peer pressure to avoid intellectual challenge.

Can anyone say 'elitist'?

I knew you could......

Candy Crowley cannot be a serious probing journalist. Who can forget her tears when is was announced in 2000 that Gore had won? She had spent so much time with Bush that she was crying when he lost. And she has not gotten any better. She has spent the last 8 years trying to prove she was right in her love for Bush. If that means she has to repeat stupid stuff about the Democrats, then so much the better, in her way of thinking.