We local bloggers need to expand our audience

Well, lots of local bloggers, little mini-news operations manage to find tidbits of real news. That makes us tipsters for the mainstream media to cherry-pick US for story ideas. And the rob us blind, just like they rob each OTHER! (Local media outlets are scavengers, after all. Substituting costly news-gathering for grand-theft from the internet, regional and daily papers, and now yes, bloggers.) We all knew that, we were in it, for chrissakes! But now we bloggers are being scavenged!

Tony manages more than his share of shitty hall exclusives because insiders know he'll print anything, even without checking it out. He's oblivious to pressures to be fair and balanced and is willing to trade his ethical reputation for a juicy tidbit, whether accurate or not. Any legitimate reporter knows how low level bureocrats have their own jealousies and agendas and TKC for them is a dream come true. A way to anonymously get even with those above them!

The problem is, when he gets a good one (as he would being an anonymous tip sheet) he doesn't get the credit for originating the news. He doesn't really originate, actually. Lets face it; he's a gossip--not that we all aren't in that business to one extent or another. We know that all tipsters are snitches with their own axes to grind and we'll help them in return for their insider secrets. Tony has taken praise to snitches to an art form, calling them, what? "KICKASS TKC Tipsters?" I'm not criticizing the guy. He just says publicly what most reporters will only say privately on the phone when no one's listening.

Don't we love it when we can quote anonymous sources? Just repeat every piece of dirt we get and no ethical editor makes us validate, collaborate and source our stories? TKC's his own boss and he doesn't require all that journalistic mumbo-jumbo.

So the legitimate media feels free to cherry-pick what he runs and go legitimize it. They'll wear a condom and unabashedly take credit for stories they steal from him because he's not legit!

The AP model has taught the media that giving credit isn't necessary unless the originator scares them with a big "COPYRIGHT 2009, (MY COMPANY) which kinda sorta says if you don't credit me, I'll call my lawyer!"

In any case, his site looks like a whorehouse of silicon implanted tee & a. He doesn't mind, given his alleged lust for BBWW and knowing it pleases male readers. Even dope dealers are businessmen; they know Johnson County cars will risk the drive to the ghetto in the darkness to buy what they want.

No one reads TKC but insiders and few of those would admit it publicly. Yet, he's still king of the local blogohood and that's big enough for his low-brow Mexican, basement living ass! We know TKC could do better but for some reason, he doesn't want to. Oh well, he's great read anyway. He can say he was robbed and lament he broke a story someone else stole... but who else cares? We insiders all know the rules, and we all worked at one time or another for the same pimp; we just told our mothers we were journalists, not hookers! The winner isn't who's the fairest, it's who scores the john's fancy!

Back to the issue at hand... at what point is the MEDIA itself, news?

It's good and healthy that the media report on itself finally. By and large, those who 'report' the news just as often 'make' it and they do so very deliberately. That decision-making and awesome influence on public opinion and official behavior makes this media an industry of public interest and scrutiny-- just as much as government itself. We media types know this even though we'd rather the camera lights be pointed outward-- not inward back at us behind the cameras.

"New media Limbaugh, tagged 'GOP leadership', should make that no debate!

Kudos to certain blogs, like TKC and KC Confidential, Bottom Line, and others, for breaking what is usually an unofficial pact that media doesn't criticize its colleagues anymore than cops criticize their own.

Time for the press to be held to the same standard it expects its targets to. What a sad state of affairs we're in. Media is supported by private enterprise and so you won't see stories about price fixing of milk prices, gasoline, unfair trade practices and ripoffs at car dealer service departments. Media's never bitten the hands that feed it; we know that but we don't voluntarily say it to our viewers and readers!

Bloggers, however, don't have those economic restrictions because we do what we do for nothing, so far.

That's good for those FABULOUS (blog) TIPSTERS who feed bloggers as they always have the traditional media. The problem is, if Woodward and Bernstein were LOCAL bloggers, the Watergate story would never have gotten out because everyone read the Washington Post. Not many read LOCAL BLOGGERS. Moreover, a great blog story wont' generate dozens and hundreds of reader phone calls to the movers and shakers.

Only our media colleagues and bureaucrats read us. In fact, steal stories from bloggers, without credit. Very sad situation. We have a ways to go. We need how to break through the monopoly that the mass media still has.

We likely won't get much help from the established media, now WILL we! Time to re-strategize how to get an audience! I'm afraid that looking to TKC to pass the word and promote his favorites isn't going to cut it. He's not the right vehicle. Not professional enough, not well staffed enough, and he shows way too much bare skin to be credible or anyway, acknowledged as influential. That may be fine, but until we get a central blogger that isn't embarrassing, the KC's blogosphere won't have anything but a whispering influence. And we won't be very well rated!

We can bitch all we want about the "falling star", their economic woes, or television's superficiality. They still have the public's attention and we don't! That's because the corporations still control the mass media.