A Lesser Journalism?

Andrew Stroehlein on online reporting
Writing in today’s Guardian in the UK, Matthew Engel blasts the U.S. media for its lap-dog approach to the expert spin doctors of the Bush administration. There’s the familiar cry asking where the journalism of the Watergate era is. All fair enough — even overstating the obvious, really — until you get to the very end of his piece, where he writes: “If there is a Watergate scandal lurking in this administration, it is unlikely to be Woodward or his colleagues who will tell us about it. If it emerges, it will probably come out on the Web. That is a devastating indictment of the state of American newspapers.” Not sure why online journalism is of a lesser value than print journalism. Certainly, the important thing is to have high-quality journalism, isn’t it? If print is too comfy in the lap of those in power, what’s wrong with the Web meeting the slack?