Tip Of The Spear 2011

Two years ago, I wrote the logical evolution of the new media world is blogs/social media/citizen journalists acting as the tip of the spear with traditional press acting as the haft.

City Journal's Conor Friedersdorf writes extensively about how the green shoots of this concept sprout in the far flung corners of the country:

In these instances, as in many others, the Los Angeles Times wasn’t needed to discover corruption: citizen journalists could sniff it out as capably as any watchdog. Once on the scent, however, the amateurs couldn’t dig as deep or growl as menacingly as newspaper reporters backed by a powerful regional publication....Going after the same records, the Times reporter made insistent phone calls to the city clerk every day, and having been denied, said (as she later recounted to NPR): “Listen, are we getting the documents? I really don’t want to sue you, but we will, and when we go to court and we win, because we will, we’ll ask the judge to make you pay our legal bills, because that’s what the public-records statute says.”

The conversation continues.