Prominent blogger shines light on New York Times anti-blog bias

In the wake of the New York Times' article about bloggers and the Eason Jordan story, prominent blogger Jeff Jarvis has written a scathing analysis of the article. His conclusion: "The Times has blog issues."

At the end of the essay, Jarvis invites Times editor Bill Keller to meet with bloggers. If he were really interested in setting up such a meeting, Jarvis probably should have steered away from comments like this in his invitation:

The problem, Mr. Keller, is that many of your reporters and editors hold citizens' media in obvious disdain that has become all too public in your pages.

I have to say I'm not as shocked as Jarvis at the Times' attitude toward bloggers. Traditional journalists are proud of their role as gatekeepers and guard the position jealously. To paraphrase John Gilmore, bloggers perceive the gatekeepers as an obstacle and are in the process of routing around it. MSM needs to come to terms with the fact that once such a process has started, there's almost no way to stop it.

Maybe instead of meeting with the bloggers as requested by Jarvis, the editors at the Times need to get together with the RIAA and opponents of open source software (read: Microsoft) to figure out how they can avoid becoming the buggy whip manufacturers of the 21st century.