WSJ's Blog Flogger Is Flogged Back

On Friday the Wall Street Journal published six examples from what must have been an outpouring of letters from blog defenders, responding to the Dec. 20 anti-blog screed by Joseph Rago, the WSJ's assistant editorial features editor (discussed by CultureGrrl here).

The WSJ's Letters editor captured the spirit of the exasperated correspondents with this headline:

Print This: Your Blast Into the Blogosphere Insults Your Readers

I particularly liked the letter from Marilyn A. Turnbow, the one woman whose letter was chosen:

Does Mr. Rago suppose that the public is not sophisticated enough to separate the wheat from the chaff in the blogosphere?...Yes, there are low-quality blogs out there. Even the high-quality blogs occasionally get things wrong. But so does The Wall Street Journal. Please give the readers of the blogosphere some credit for critical thinking.

For those of you with WSJ online subscriptions, the six letters are here.

This heated dialogue between proponents of new and old media will cool in the years to come, as the MSM traditionalists realize that, like it or not, more and more information-seekers are being caught in the web.

Having said that, don't forget to pick up your copy of the WSJ tomorrow, and look for my Boston ICA article on the "Leisure & Arts" page (or, if you're allergic to paper, you'll find it on CultureGrrl).