Hugh Hewitt - UPDATE ON THE RISE OF THE BLOGS: Lynne Cheney on Hardball tonight, with guest host Campbell Brown:
Brown: How do you explain to [children] what is real, what's of value in all of that morass?
Cheney: "Well, I think that schools should make this part of the curriculum, and in good schools it is. Learning to evaluate information is the kind of thing that you need to do every day as a journalist. It is important to so many professions, and it is important to us as citizens. And there are tricks you teach them, you know, how well does this person source his material, are their footnotes available? Can you try checking it from different perspectives and different angles? So there are ways to tell kids how to use the internet. It is a wonderful resource. I do research on the internet all the time, and I love reading the bloggers.
Brown: Well I was going to ask you about that. What do you make of the evolution of the blogs?
Cheney: "I think it is quite wonderful. It is a real democratization of information so that people don't have to rely on one or two sources. They've got multiple sources. You know, I can tell in about two minutes, on a blog, whether this is someone whose opinion I value or not. You know. You know, in a conversation when you are talking with someone who is bright and well-informed, and I can do that same thing when I am looking at blogs on the internet.
Brown: You have got to have a favorite?
Cheney: "I have a lot of blogs that I read."
Brown: "What are they?"
Cheney: "Oh I love Hugh Hewitt, I think he's terrific. I love Powerline. I read Instapundit, and, I don't know, does RealClearPolitics constitute a blog? I certainly looked at it a lot during the campaign. It was a wonderful source and remains a wonderful source of articles that are being written in many places."
Thanks to Mrs. Cheney for the very nice plug. She obviously understands how the blogosphere is changing the news business, and the Washington Post's acquisition of Slate suggests someone at the Post does as well. Can the rest of legacy media be far behind? |
