YKos media panel

The posts are coming fast and furious today, thanks in no small part to all the entertainment of YearlyKos.

Right now I'm taking in a panel on the mainstream media and blogs, which seemed like it would be more combative than it's actually been. The panelists are Jay Carney of TIME, Mike Allen of Politico, Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, and Jill from Feministe. Mike lavished praise upon Glenn and the TPM enterprise, among others, and Jay was complimentary to the panel and the crowd. Glenn threw some grenades, making the point that there *really are* differences between blogs and MSM, and many structural failings of the latter, despite the initial love-in, and now the questioners are laying into Jay and Mike a little bit.

But you know what? The only person on the panel whose work I was previously unfamiliar with, Jill, is perhaps the most impressive. She's being bypassed a little now that the audience is challenging the MSM representatives (who, I should note, are being great sports and savvy reporters by doing the panel), and the topic is turning toward security issues (which Glenn has covered extensively) but every time she talks I find myself nodding. For example, it's a basic but overlooked point, which she made clearly, that the left wants the media to be accurate, and the right wants the media to be conservative.

So while I listen I'm going through the Feministe archives, and it's some really good stuff. I'm pretty interested in feminist issues, as everybody should be, and my regular feminism read is Salon's excellent "Broadsheet." Another one for the ever-growing RSS feed, I guess. For a sample, here's a very thoughtful discussion about the YKos conference in the context of feminist priorities.

UPDATE: Jill wins more points by making the (unpopular in this crowd but nonetheless accurate) point that it's unfair to trash the MSM for reporting White House statements -- that stuff *is news,* it just needs to be reported in context (i.e., "White House says whatever . . . experts and facts belie the statement).

UPDATE II: Allen is just getting creamed by questioners, but he's holding his own, rhetorically at least. Politico is pretty crappy; why does the guy who runs the political reporting sound so reasonable in this context? [Note from John: Because Mike Allen is a real journalist with a damn good resume working for an online publication that's a bit yellow.]

FINAL UPDATE: For those here at the conference, I'll be on the foreign policy panel starting at 2:30 (CDT) in room 404a-c.