New York Times editor off base when it comes to lawyer blogs

Per the Editors Weblog, Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, believes that new media such as blogs could never compete with the trustworthy news generated by actual newspaper reporting.

Keller says that things like blogs, search engines and Google News could never replace actual reporting. He says “What is absent from the vast array of new media outlets is, first and foremost, the great engine of newsgathering – the people who witness events, ferret out information, supply context and explanation.”…..He explains that sources like Google and Wikipedia cannot replace traditional newspapers because they do not produce content. They aggregate material from many different sources, some of which are very unreliable.

Lawyer blogs, in many cases do produce content. Lawyers ferret out information, supply context and explanation. Even if there were legal news reporters on the niches covered by law blogs, and there are not, reporters would have no where near the domain expertise of a skilled lawyer.

Blogs are not going to replace newspapers by any stretch of the imagination. But newspapers would be well served to realize well done niche blogs in areas such as the law are a trustworthy, if not the only, source of information and commentary.

Smart newspapers, the New York Times included, are leveraging the news platform they have to curate blog content to complement content the paper generates. We’re already seeing that in legal reporting. Incisive Media’s ALM is developing a law blog network. The ABA Journal is culling blog content as part of its online edition.

Give us a five years and 75,000 more law blogs and we practicing lawyers, law professors, and law students will be doing a lot of reporting. And a force to reckoned with if we are not incorporated into legal newspapers and magazines.