kEnnEdy | PoliTiCAl BlogS 185the newspapers themselves cater to a wide range of different opinions.
“you look at the media in Britain, it’s vibrant and it’s exciting and it’s fun,
because they’re all ideologically tinged,” Moulitsas said at an appear-
ance in Boston last fall. “And that’s a good thing, because people buy
them and understand that their viewpoints are going to be represented.”
The notion that journalism must be tied to an ideological community
may seem disheartening to traditionalists. In practice, though, journal-
ism based on communities of shared interests and beliefs can be every
bit as valuable as the old model of objectivity, if approached with rigor
and respect for the truth.
Last year, for instance, Talking Points Memo (TPM) and its related
blogs helped break the story of how the u.S. Department of Justice had
fired eight u.S. attorneys for what appeared to be politically motivated
reasons, a scandal that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales. TPM’s reporting was based in part on information dug up and
passed along by its liberal readership. The founder and editor, Joshua
Micah Marshall, received a George Polk Award, but it belonged as much
to the community he had assembled as it did to him personally.
Of course, we still need neutral, non-opinionated journalism to help
us make sense of the world around us. TPM’s coverage of the u.S. attor-
neys scandal was outstanding, but it was also dismissive of arguments
that it was much ado about nothing, or that previous administrations
had done the same or worse. Liberals or conservatives who get all of
their news from ideologically friendly sources don’t have much incen-
tive to change their minds.Connecting to Communities of shared interests
even news outlets that excel at traditional, “objective” journalism do so
within the context of a community. Some might not find liberal bias in
the news pages of the New York Times, as the paper’s conservative critics
would contend, but there’s little doubt that the Times serves a commu-
nity of well-educated, affluent, culturally liberal readers whose prefer-
ences and tastes must be taken into account. Not to be a journalistic
relativist, but all news needs to be evaluated within the context in which
it was produced, even an old-fashioned, inverted-pyramid-style dis-
patch from the wires. Who was interviewed? Who wasn’t? Why? These
are questions that must be asked regardless of the source.
We might now be coming full circle as placeblogs — chatty, conver-
sational blogs that serve a particular geographic community — become
more prevalent. Lisa Williams, founder of H20town, a blog that serves101112131407_GRE_5344_Ch7_151_210.indd 185 11/19/14 1:59 PM