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Hugh Hewitt, Executive Editor of Townhall.com [LexBlog Q & A]

March 18, 2008

Our traditional LexBlog Q & A interview series has been missing lately. Last week was dominated by TechShow coverage, with interviews focusing on the Chicago coference both leading up and during the event.

But now, it’s back to business. And there’s no better way to start things off than with a high profile guest. That guest is Hugh Hewitt: Executive Editor of Townhall.com, professor at Chapman University Law School, host of a nationally syndicated talk radio show, and – of course – blogger (his blog can be found at HughHewitt.com).

Hugh, who has long been involved with politics and media, is a leading voice in the new media movement. His impressions of where it’s all going and how blogs can play into that are available in the full text of our chat, after the jump.

1. Rob La Gatta: As a law professor, do you see that younger law students are actively using blogs or other forms of new media in their day-to-day academics and professional work?

Hugh Hewitt: I’m not sure about their professional work. [For] law students, the younger professors are urging the use of blogs, I’ve integrated blogging into the Nexus Journal (which I’m the advisor to, at Chapman) with the idea that if you can learn how that interrelates with the profession, it’s going to help you in the practice.

2. Rob La Gatta: What about between law professors? Do you think there is good networking potential for creating long distance relationships using blogs?

Hugh Hewitt: Absolutely. In fact, we devoted a whole symposium to this two years ago at Nexus, where the impact on legal scholarship and blogging was the subject.

It’s already done some extraordinarily unusual leveling of hierarchies. A couple of the participants in that panel talked about how they’re at not such top tier law schools, but because of the leveling impact of blogs, they are now involved in collaborative efforts with people who are.

3. Rob La Gatta:

I’ve seen you’ve said said that newspapers are essentially dying at the hands of the web. Why do you think newspaper staffs, many of whom are still resistant to the impending change, haven’t accepted it and started to move in the direction where they could be utilizing new media effectively?

Hugh Hewitt: The best ones have. If you look at washingtonpost.com, which is edited by Jim Brady…he completely understands [that] the revolution is underway. And The Post has embraced it; a day doesn’t come by without an innovation at washingtonpost.com that complements – and doesn’t compete with itself, but complements – the old media paper.

I also think you see at The New York Times an extraordinary change of course, [after they] tried to limit the availability of their text through TimesSelect. That failed, and they realized it failed, and they’ve changed completely. Out at The Los Angeles Times, the new editor – appointed by Sam Zell – is their Internet guy.

I think after 5 years of digging in their heels and attempting to deny reality, the sort of old media resistance to new media pacing and distributive expertise has collapsed.

4. Rob La Gatta:

What about the diversity of voices? Do you see new media as a way to essentially improve on democracy by allowing more voices into the discussion?

Hugh Hewitt: Inevitably. I also like the fact that it allows for the instant application of expertise.

If we use a legal issue, for example: the Tony Rezko trial, underway in Chicago…the corruption trial that touches on Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. If that [case] had happened even 10 years ago, we’d have to wait for The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times to write a story, and we’d have to wait for the paper to get to our house (if we even subscribed to it) or for a wire service to pick up on some aspect of it. Then we’d have to go get a professor to comment on it, etc.

Nowadays, law professors are following it all over the country. They’re posting their opinions on it, instantly; there are news feeds developed, [such as] at Rezkorama.com. Rezkorama is a blog and news media aggregator. If you type in “Tony Rezko” anywhere in the world that’s a blog or a new media source, it’ll show up aggregated at this site.

Suddenly, if a law professor has an opinion on whether he’s guilty or not guilty or the fact that the jury is anonymous in a fraud case, which is very unusual, they can post it instantly. That makes for a much faster and more informed appreciation of a story.

5. Rob La Gatta: Personally, what do you find the most rewarding and the most challenging parts of maintaining a blog?

Hugh Hewitt: The most rewarding is that getting inside of the news cycle is very easy for people who’ve built up audience. People stop by, sometimes 50,000 people a day, at HughHewitt.com to see what I’m talking about or what I’m saying or where I’m pointing. And that’s a wonderful thing. It allows for me to publicize that which I think ought to get publicity. And that’s a value; most people who write do so for that purpose of influencing, large or small, the opinions of others. So I like that part of it.

I don’t like the fact that a lot of the asserted expertise on the web isn’t expert at all, and as a result we’re going through a transition where the consumer of information has to re-learn that they cannot trust what they read. The old media’s great advantage is, even though it was biased in an extraordinary sort of way, you could trust it to a certain degree as to key facts. Maybe not the spin they put on it. Maybe they were biased in what they excluded or concluded, as Dan Rather was in the famous Texas National Guard case on 60 Minutes: very biased, very bad reporting. But that was the exception, not the rule.

Nowadays, it’s the wild wild west, and people put out stuff that just isn’t true. And that’s a set of skills that the modern reader is going to have to develop for themselves: whom do you trust.

5a. Rob La Gatta: Have you developed it?

Hugh Hewitt: Oh, yeah. But I’ve been doing this for six years, and bring a law professor/lawyer skepticism to everything. That’s a useful skepticism to have.

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