I Didn't Know This Was Going To Be On the Quiz...

But Dr. Perlmutter gives me an "A" all the same:

I first talked about the blogger-driven battles over the Israel-Hezbullah war imagery in an essay for Editor & Publisher and then here and here in PBB.

And the controversy continues--with a constructive object lesson for us all.

I don't think blogs will replace big media, but the small blogger can, with moxie and smarts, shame the big boys and girls by doing the job that we trained the professionals to do in journalism school. Every good J-School teacher I know instructs her/his students to think, question and dig. Don't just accept the press release or the face value of an event. Scratch your head and ask: “Where can I go besides the usual sources to get the information that will better reveal the truth?”

Sometimes the answer is simple, and you think “Wow, why did nobody else think of that?” The answer is sadly that industrial journalism breeds laziness and routine. There are many hard working journalists out there; but the system undercuts their inventiveness and encourages them to walk the rut of what everybody else is doing.

Not so with the nimble, one wo/man blog enterprise. Consider the case of Mr. Bob Owens, aka, "ConfederateYankee."

As they say, read it all.