Ben Smith of BuzzFeed crafted an eloquent defense of this new type of journalism, arguing "Once you stop laughing and start thinking, the extreme virulence of the social web just might revolutionize the way you think about the world too".
The show (and brief video commentary from Nicholas Lemann, the dean of Columbia's journalism school) argues that complaints about newspapers have often been the same as they are now, and — just as often — both justified and unjustified.
OO Media Miscovers Climate: It's Dumb Journalism, Stupid argues Todd Gitlin, a reputable investigative reporter and author.
"It's not just an abstract exercise in theoretical journalism, she argues.
The requests are a costly "burden" amounting to "lazy journalism", councils argue.
New Matilda was blistering in response, labelling Kitchen Cabinet "junk food journalism" and arguing that when "Crabb breaks bread with the Morrisons and Macklins of the world she helps further marginalise the people being punished by their policies".
Edmund Wilson dismissed Civil War-era poetry as "versified journalism," but Faith Barrett argues that it has "phenomenal formal range" and played a key role in shaping our history.
At its most egregious this has produced what Peter Oborne, who writes for the pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph, calls "client journalism" which, he argues, has become the dominant mode of political reporting: "To put the matter at its simplest, journalists became instruments of government.
"The newspaper is dead, long live the newspaper!" has lately become the incantation of advocates of e-journalism, who argue that the twenty-first-century death of the newspaper hardly merits a moment's mourning, since it is no death at all but, rather, a rebirth.
"I think too much of political journalism is thoughtlessly scrutinising," argues Mitchell.
