The second is that there are many home-grown examples of this sort of antipathy that surely were more pertinent to the local scene. Here and here for instance, where Miranda Devine is taken to task by a blogger for making things up. Some bloggers might suggest that perhaps those examples weren't used, because Miranda writes for the same newspaper as Rob O'Neil. We don't believe that's true, by the way, because Rob's a highly competent, hard-working journalist whose attention was almost certainly focused overseas because of the blogging awards. But again, it's surely not a great showcase for mainstream journalism.

In general, however, we think the story is disappointing, because it scarcely breaks the surface tension on a deep and fascinating issue that's been much more profoundly explored by people like Jay Rosen here, rebutted here, here and certainly here, where Dan Gillmor has switched from mainstream to something he calls citizen's journalism, which seems to be an increasingly powerful phenomenon in the US, and as far as we can tell, non-existent over here. The reasons for that would make a very good story, we're sure, but somehow we doubt that our mass media will be tackling it.

Rob's piece would have been a better story, in our view, if Rob had ventured a comment. Such as, for instance, this one from Betsy Newmark, a history and civics teacher in the Carolinas:

I think it is becoming more and more clear that journalism is not a profession that demands specialized training like being a lawyer or doctor. Mostly, you need to know how to write and write quickly. You need research skills. And you need access to stories. "Amateurs" blogging from home can have the first two skills. And, as Jeff Jarvis said on CNN this weekend, whereever the public can appear at functions, they can blog. The circle of stories that only journalists can report is becoming more limited. I would like to picture the interrelationship between bloggers and journalists as an unspoken partnership. They can go out there and do the reporting where bloggers can't or won't go. Bloggers can add their own bits of research and use their memories to make connections to previous stories such as Captain Ed finding the previous quote that Eason Jordan had made alleging that the military had tortured journalists. And people will benefit from having more information available to them than they had previously.

Bleeding Edge has pretty much the same point of view. The Age is a great newspaper, and the community would be much poorer if it fails to survive in this new and immensely challenging media world. Its chances of doing that would be much better, in our opinion, if it explored topics like this with a great deal more vigour.

And by the way, here's an interesting discussion on the topic from the ABC's Media Report.