Media Curmudgeon

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August 20, 2007

Skube Doobie Doo

On Sunday, August 19, Elon University Assistant Professor Michael Skube wrote an Op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times titled “Blogs: All the noise that fits” and sub-titled “The hard-line opinions on weblogs are no substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters.” Skube made the mistake of citing Josh Marshall’s TalkingPointsMemo, one of the Media Curmudgeon’s favorite blogs, as an example of a blog that doesn’t do original reporting. Here is Marshall’s response:

Annals of Reporting
08.19.07 -- 8:16PM
By Josh Marshall

"For a variety of reasons I try to stay out of the debates over blogs as such, what they're good or bad at and the rest. But this morning I was alerted to an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times by Michael Skube… The sum of the piece is that the blogosphere is as rife with disputation as it is thin on information, or more specifically, reporting, writing that demands 'time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance.'

Now, fair enough. There's certainly no end of blog pontificating fueled by puffed-up self-assertion rather than facts. But Skube's piece reads with a vagueness that suggests he has less than a passing familiarity with the topic at issue. And I will confess to you that what really caught my attention was that in a column bewailing how blogs don't do any real reporting one of the four bloggers he mentioned was me.

Now, whether we do any quality reporting at TPM is a matter of opinion. And everyone is entitled to theirs. So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he was including us as examples in a column about the dearth of original reporting in the blogosphere. Now, I get criticized plenty. And that's fair since I do plenty of criticizing. And I wouldn't raise any of this here if it weren't for what came up in Skube's response.

Not long after I wrote I got a reply: ‘I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site. So to that extent I'm happy to give you benefit of the doubt ...’

This seemed more than a little odd since, as I said, he certainly does use me as an example -- along with (Andrew) Sullivan, Matt Yglesias and Kos. So I followed up noting my surprise that he didn't seem to remember what he'd written in his own opinion column on the very day it appeared and that in any case it cut against his credibility somewhat that he wrote about sites he admits he'd never read.

To which I got this response: ‘I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ...’

And this is from someone who teaches journalism?

Perhaps I'm naive. But it surprises me a great deal that a professor of journalism freely admits that he allows to appear under his own name claims about a publication he concedes he's never read.

Actually, if you look at what he says, it seems Skube's editor at the Times oped page didn't think he had enough specific examples in his article decrying our culture of free-wheeling assertion bereft of factual backing. Or perhaps any examples. So the editor came up with a few blogs to mention and Skube signed off. And Skube was happy to sign off on the addition even though he didn't know anything about them.

I grant you that the blogosphere needs better bloggers. But, as usual, the need for better critics seems even more acute."

Another very smart blooger, Jesse Kornbluth of Head Butler sent the following email to Skube:

“Prof. Skube -

I read your Op-ed and the Josh Marshall exchange.
May I presume that he quoted you accurately?

My question is best framed as one you might deal with in class.
Thus:

You write a piece.
Your editors insert text that draws on their "expertise."
What is your responsibility for those words?

Best,
Jesse Kornbluth
Editor, HeadButler.com”

There are other similar comments, some not as subtle but equally damming, on Skube’s piece on the LA Times website.

Why are intelligent bloggers and journalists pissed off Skube’s intellectually dishonest, muddily reasoned, big-J-snobbish screed? Because he has no clue what he’s talking about. He’s typical of journalism and communications academicians who are mired in the foggy past and still teach reporting techniques in what a favorite cartoon of mine called dinosaur blogs.

If you look at Skube’s bio on the Elon University website and look at the up-to-the-second courses he teaches, you’ll see why. He teaches CM 218. Writing and Information Gathering, JCM 225. Reporting and Newswriting, “By studying the basic types of news articles for the mass media, students learn to gather information and report it in standard journalistic style. Focus is on writing leads, interviewing techniques and editing copy. Word processing ability necessary. Prerequisite: C or better in JCM 218,” and JCM 377. Magazine Writing, “A study of the varieties of magazine writing today, with emphasis on the ways in which magazines will be considered, from those that convey useful information for daily living to those that address political and cultural issues. Because magazine writing differs from newspaper writing, particular attention will be paid to style and narrative technique. Students will write a magazine-length piece of their own. A firm command of grammar as well as an interest in writing in the ‘longer form’ is essential.”

By the way, putting quotes around “longer form” is incorrect grammar.

Above is the thoroughly modern graphic Skube uses on his Course Descriptions web page.

Assistant Professor Skube touts in his bio that he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989—but not for reporting, for criticism. He was book editor and wrote a book review column for the Raleigh News & Observer. In other words, he won a prize for writing opinions, not for patient fact-checking. Here’s what he wrote in his pretentious LA Times Op-ed piece:

“In our time, the Washington Post's reporting, in late 2005, of the CIA's secret overseas prisons and its painstaking reports this year on problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- both of which won Pulitzer Prizes -- were not exercises in armchair commentary. The disgrace at Walter Reed, true enough, was first mentioned in a blog, but the full scope of that story could not have been undertaken by a blogger or, for that matter, an Op-Ed columnist, whose interest is in expressing an opinion quickly and pungently. Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance. It's not something one does as a hobby.”

He won a Pulitzer for expression opinions about books, he doesn’t fact check what is published under his name, and he’s a full-time teacher who writes Op-ed opinion pieces as a hobby.

Well, Michael, your hobby, like mine, is expressing opinions, and it’s a worthy one because it creates a public dialogue. I argue online with my wonderful conservative and liberal friends and we have a stimulating time. I hope you will take time to have a meaningful dialogue with your critics instead of being petulantly defensive.

And I hope you’ll subscribe to the RSS feed of Talking Points Memo, but from what it looks like you know about the web, you might not know what an RSS feed is. But at least you should apologize for being wrong to Marshall, who does superb, fact-checking reporting.

Your Op-ed piece seems to me to be similar to someone who teaches students how to use an abacus complaining about how silly the theory of quantum mechanics is after hearing fellow teachers discussing Walter Isaacson’s biography of Einstein and not having read the book or knowing anything about physics.

Posted by Charles Warner at August 20, 2007 12:30 PM

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