Accept no substitutes

Skube and researched writing – Strike Two

In December 2005, Michael Skube wrote a poorly researched (or more properly not researched at all) oped about blogging for the News and Record (Greensboro, NC). [Oddly this article cannot be found in NewsBank or online]

Ed Cone was so shocked that he called Skube to ask him about his experiences reading blogs and found in a very interesting conversation that Skube admitted to having no experience reading blogs at all short of a couple of Andrew Sullivan pieces.

In the process, Ed mentioned Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo. Skube owned up to knowing Marshall from print but had never heard of TPM.

Fast forward to yesterday and a new diatribe against blogs published in the LA Times. Here Skube reheats his arguments, but this time points to TPM as a place where facts aren’t checked. Only one problem, Skube still admits to not having read TPM — this time to Marshall himself.

Instead, Skube claims that his editors altered his article to insert TPM and others. Skube signed off on the article having yet to have done any of the research required to have written it.

Marshall writes about this at TPM. Ed Cone and G’boro bloggers rev up on WordUp. Jay Rosen hits hard on PressThink. Dan Gillmor has his say at Center for Citizen Journalism.

UPDATE: Jay’s piece is republished in Daily Kos with over 300 comments so far.

UPDATE: Our wonderful news librarian reports “the News & Record librarian confirmed that Skube does not permit his columns to be available in the online public archives of the News & Record.” This makes it difficult to place the articles side-by-side.

1 Comment

  1. Nathan

    Hmm, perhaps Skube can write something along the lines of “Fake Matt Drudge” and learn to love blogging.

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