Blogs manage tsunami tragedy myths

A huge number of people have chosen to go to the internet for information, pictures and video about the Asian tsunami.  A headline for a New York Times article today indicates that the blogs supplying this information have spread more than real news about the tsunami:  "Myths Run Wild in Blog Tsunami Debate."

But the article content doesn't go with the headline.  The article reports on a single blog that had bad information on the tsunami.  And then reports that many readers "flamed" the author in the comments section of the blog.  Exactly -- that's how blogs work -- the readers are part of the determination of what is actually correct.  Out of the thousands of blogs reporting information on the tsunami, the headline features the one they found that had errors.

Jeff Jarvis thinks there is more to the story than a headline that doesn't fit the article the follows:

I read a great number of blogs covering the tsunami and I found more compelling stories than I heard on TV or read in The Times; I found a faster response to the news with more information and more first-hand reporting; I found caring people who came together to share information that could save lives; I found quality and no crackpots. But you can always find crackpots ... when you go looking for them.

In this, The Times is trying to marginalize blogs -- making them look like the domain of nuts -- without realizing that they are only marginalizing their own readers. See this weekend's Pew study: The people are reading blogs. And I'll just bet that Times readers read blogs disproportionately.

I could be wrong, but I smell the fine hand of a grizzled, old, grouchy, change-hating editor in this. When a story is mangled in such a way, when the facts in the story don't back up the spin of the headline and lead, that's often the case, from my experience: An editor sent a reporter out to create a story with a prefab spin and didn't want to be bothered with the actual reporting that came back.

And he sees something more fundamental, as well.  It is the five Kubler-Ross stages of dying -- the loss of the old world order as a new order rolls in:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

First, big media denied that blogs existed or mattered. Then we saw anger, witness The New York Times' dis [above of tsunami blog coverage.]  We are starting to see bargaining as blogs are incorporated in, gingerly, by some big media. I've seen depression; some people I know in this business say it will never be the same (and I try to supress my grins). Acceptance isn't far off.