Jack Shafer Defends Bloggers

Responding to this article written by David Shaw of the LA Times, which sneers at blogs and bloggers as unprofessional rabble, Slate's Jack Shafer sums up why Shaw is wrong, thus:

Shaw seems to believe that the First Amendment and its subsidiary protections belong to the credentialed employees of the established corporate press and not to the great unwashed. I suggest that he—or one of the four experienced editors who touched his copy—research the history of the First Amendment. They'll learn that the Founders wrote it precisely to protect Tom, Dick, and Matt and the wide-eyed pamphleteers and the partisan press of the time. The professional press, which Shaw believes so essential in protecting society, didn't even exist until the late 19th century.

The Dread Pundit Bluto is all verklempt. If this keeps up, Shafer's customary paragraph summing up blogger reactions to his articles will have to change its name from "Bloggers Rip my Flesh" to "Bloggers Anoint My Flesh". Shafer has proven me wrong. I thought Shafer merely tolerated bloggers as an unfortunate phenomenon of the computer age. It seems that...he likes us.