If you haven’t read this morning’s Wall Street Journal op-ed by Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star-Ledger, “All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Newspaper”, it’s just the kind of arrogant-clueless screed by a newspaperman against the blogosphere that elicits first anger, then pity.

These opinion columns are nothing new. See David Simon’s disproportionate contempt for bloggers for an example of someone who managed to succeed after taking a buyout yet is still consumed by the subject. Such columns have long been a symptom of the industry’s steady decline, but as it slips into precipitous free fall, schadenfreude has given way to Willy Loman-esque pathos. I’ve never found Ol’ Gil from The Simpsons all that funny, in part because he was a poor replacement for Lionel Hutz, but also because it’s no fun to watch the helpless fail and flail.

Still, that does not mean the poverty of their arguments should be excused, especially because they are the squeakiest wheels in this dilapidated machine, and their erroneous conclusions may well be adopted by those watching from a short distance. So far Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and Robert Ivan at Metaprinter have ably pointed out the many flaws in his piece, but I’d like to tackle another. Here is Mulshine making an elitist argument that is not prima facie incorrect, but is nevertheless undone by its own careless construction:

In his book, “An Army of Davids,” Mr. Reynolds heralds an era in which “[m]illions of Americans who were in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff.”

No, they can’t. Millions of American can’t even pronounce “pundit,” or spell it for that matter. On the Internet and on the other form of “alternative media,” talk radio, a disliked pundit has roughly a 50-50 chance of being derided as a “pundint,” if my eyes and ears are any indication.

The type of person who can’t even keep track of the number of times the letter “N” appears in a two-syllable word is not the type of person who is going to offer great insight into complex issues.

All right, well this question about usage of “pundit” vs. “pundint” is easily testable. Let’s go to Google BlogSearch:

• For a search on the single word pundit we find 705,874 results. Sorted for relevance, here are the top three results as of Sunday afternooon:
1. Daily Kos: Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
2. Gateway Pundit: Israeli Gaza Strikes Called ‘Holocaust’ By Hamas …
3. Daily Pundit » Sweets for the Sour

Already we can see that Mulshine should have chosen a different word to illustrate the alleged ignorance of Internet political commentators. Thanks to those like Instapundit, the word has enjoyed a strong currency in recent years, perhaps more so than any word besides “meme”.

• For a search on pundint we find 1,320 results with the top three by relevance as follows:
1. Campaign Retrospective: Goofiest “Pun-dint” Remarks
2. Dec 18, Pundint or Pundit : Common Errors in English
3. MacBigot Cached Glances » Blog Archive » It’s PUNDIT, not PUNDINT …

Remember, these are not necessarily the savviest bloggers (let alone, strictly, bloggers), just those which (the increasingly unreliable) BlogSearch coughed up first.

As someone who tries to anticipate likely objections while writing, I can’t imagine doing as Mulshine does and simply assuming that others would willingly accept one’s personal impressions as empirical evidence. A quick Internet search reveals his example as, charitably, an exaggeration.

Not only is he wrong, even if he was right it wouldn’t be the damning evidence he thinks it is. In fact, I read a newspaper column two weeks ago that replaced the common phrase “to the … manor born” with the malaprop “to the … manner born.” A mental slip-up of this sort is indeed careless. It may mean the columnist (it was Kathleen Parker) should be scrutinized more closely, but it does not mean that newspaper columnists should be dismissed out of hand.

Smart people make common errors all the time. And Mulshine certainly seems to be among them them.

Instapundit readers 7, Blog P.I. 3: Everyone in the comments (and now Glenn, too) is right about the Shakespeare quote. I didn’t realize the phrase I knew came from the title of a British sitcom, To The Manor Born, a pun on the Shakespeare line. Would it hurt or help my cause to mention I’m an English major?

This is pretty ironic given the subject of this post, and while it certainly means one should always read me with a critical eye, it actually underscores the point about focusing on these things too much. To wit, a Google search of to the manor born returns 500,000 results, while one for to the manner born returns 52,400 results. To make another gratuitous Simpsons reference: “Show’s over, Shakespeare.”

To the list of smart people who make mental slips, one might add yours truly.

P.S. I’ve actually seen Hamlet on screen or stage at least four times, and I’m a fan, but I’ll be sure to read up on this bit now.

Maybe this isn’t surprising: she’s famous for her longevity and cantankerousness more than any story she covered during her very, very long career in Washington. But in another way, it is surprising: after all, she is perhaps the most famous and most permanent White House correspondent. I don’t mean to pick on an old lady, but I think that her admirers and detractors can both agree that she makes news for what she says, not what she writes.

So, where would you even go to find her column? Good question!

The Hearst Corporation may have fallen in stature somewhat since Xanadu… er, I mean Hearst Castle played host to debaucherous parties involving nubile young starlets in the early days of Hollywood, but the company remains one of the biggest newspaper (and other media) holding companies in the United States (for whatever that’s worth).

In order to find Thomas’ column, I thought I’d visit some Hearst-owned newspaper websites. What I found wasn’t encouraging. On some of the smaller newspapers’ sites, the opinion/commentary sections may as well be abandoned. But at its three largest papers — the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News — there was no Thomas to be found. At smaller, still important newspapers such as the Albany Times-Union, there are numerous local columnists as well as nationally syndicated columnists such as Ellen Goodman and Kathleen Parker. But no Thomas.

To find Helen Thomas’ allegedly-syndicated column — which may well run in the print edition of some of these papers — you have to consult the Oracle of Mountain View. The top result is for TheBostonChannel.com, the website of WCBV-TV — a television station owned by subsidiary Hearst-Argyle. And if you go digging further, you can find her column at websites such as WBAL-TV in Baltimore and KCRA-TV in Sacramento.

So, if you care to read them, there they are. But as I said, I don’t mean to pick on an old lady. I think I’ll leave that to Jon Chait*.

P.S. With apologies to the Ford Motor Company.

* Or I would, except it seems the article has been removed from the web, and is not available on any public website that I can find. Hmm. If Blog P.I. disappears from the web, now you’ll know why.

Helen Thomas photograph via Baratunde on Flickr.

Apart from deriving an equivalence between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that one need not be a member of the leftroots to find inadequate, Halperin dons his finest hairshirt and wails about his years in the wilderness:

For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president. The chaotic and demanding requirements of running for president, I felt, were a perfect test for the toughest job in the world.

But now I think I was wrong. The “campaigner equals leader” formula that inspired me and so many others in the news media is flawed.

…

So if we for too long allowed ourselves to be beguiled by “What It Takes” — certainly not the author’s fault — what do those of us who cover politics do now? After all, Mr. Cramer’s style of campaign coverage is alluring in an election season that features so many candidates with heroic biographies and successful careers in and out of politics. (Not to mention two wide-open races.)

Well, we pause, take a deep breath and resist. At least sometimes. In the face of polls and horse-race maneuvering, we can try to keep from getting sucked in by it all. We should examine a candidate’s public record and full life as opposed to his or her campaign performance. But what might appear simple to a voter can, I know, seem hard for a journalist.

It’s not that he’s wrong (although he might be). Rather, it’s that Halperin is not the person to deliver this message. Otherwise, he will have to change his style of reporting, immediately. What are the chances of that? Well, let’s have a look at what The Page looks like today:

That’s what I thought. In fairness, maybe Mr. Halperin hasn’t figured out what comes next. Until he does, “POW!!! BAM!!!! BOP!!!!” it is.

The subject was how technology is changing politics — a mandate broad enough to take it in almost any direction. And if anything, I was the wet blanket of the panel. My opening comments focused on how the Internet is changing politics in ways not unique compared to previous technologies, techniques and politics. I didn’t get all the details out on Saturday, but the argument went something like:

Radio and blogging both gave candidates ways to bypass established media channels and speak directly to supporters and voters. Television and online video can reframe the public’s perception of political events. Direct mail then as e-mail now communicate around the media as well as solicit campaign funds from an (ideally) opt-in crowd.

Panels such as these are at their best when the most interesting comments come from the audience. One theme that emerged in discussion was how even print journalists are being asked to produce short video (and audio) segments for the Internet when reporting from the road. To some extent, each of my fellow panelists had witnessed or dealt with this issue. It’s an interesting and even logical development, as online ad revenues rise compared to the dead tree edition. One also has to also wonder how thin it stretches their already-dwindling reportorial resources. At least in the Morissettean sense, it’s ironic that the migration of news content to the web coincides with layoffs owing to competition from the web.

My friend Robert Bluey, also present, volunteered that his alma mater, Ithaca College, is now offering a course it calls “Backpack Journalism.” He explains in an interesting post at his own blog:

Students are given a backpack with a MacBook, video camera, digital camera, a recording device and other instruments to produce a story. After receiving their assignments, the students are dispatched to cover the story using multiple media.

I find this new kind of journalism fascinating. However, I also sympathize with working journalists who are primarily writers, who may now find themselves needing to acquire new skills to adapt to a changing industry. My co-panelists are among the lucky ones — I suspect they’ll learn new tricks more quickly than some of their older colleagues.

One of whom might be Michael Scully, former journalist, journalism professor and blogger (but not the writer from The Simpsons). I tend to share his fears about what “backpack journalism” will mean in some (many, most?) newsrooms:

If Backpack Journalism is about sending ONE person out into the field to report a story, than Backpack Journalism is a travesty. It’s an accountant’s dream but an editor’s nightmare. Accountants love it because you’re sending one person out into the field to produce the work of three people; it’s an editor’s nightmare because the quality of the work is diminished.

I submit that the true business model for New Media must be to send THREE people out into the field. Let one report, one produce, one shoot. Each skill is very important, each skill is very different, each skill has a professional value.

On the other hand, someone who could do all three well would be highly sought-after and accordingly compensated. If the job description caught on, it would presumably spur different kinds of students to enter journalism in the first place. Myself, I actually applied to film school out of high school, but instead pursued print journalism in-state, as I that proved more realistic. But if becoming a “backpack journalist” was an option at Allen Hall, I’d at least have given it the old college try. Heck, I might have even finished my Journalism double-major.

And you know, I bet we can fit this into a hastily-assembled anti-triumphalist SAT problem like the ones above:

Note: As I promised above, a bit more about the Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship Program. They are presently seeking applicants for 2008. If you’re inclined toward constitutional democracy and classically liberal economics, and have less than ten years of journalism experience, then you (yes, you!) could land $50,000 to $75,000 to write on a topic of your choosing. Details here. Tell ‘em Blog P.I. sent you.

*I was also the only panelist with a client of current interest, so it made for a few interesting moments as the subject was indeed taken in almost any direction. Hats off to the Standard’s Michael Goldfarb for trying to get me to make news.

[I]t’s only been about 10 months since Time Magazine declined to choose an individual for its much-devalued Person of the Year award, so it only stands to reason they’re back in the hunt. It’s also been nearly a decade since Time named someone (or thing) from the tech industry — Jeff Bezos in 1999 — and more than 20 years since they named the PC its “Machine of the Year.” Also, it’s not an election year, so it won’t be the winner of the presidential election. It’s time for another gimmick!

At left, our Photoshopped prediction from two months ago. At right, Time Warner’s actual latest cover, announced this weekend:

       

Although Blog P.I. doesn’t make prognostications a regular part of what we do, we have made a few good calls — Not Paul Begala told you here first that Jon Tester wasn’t getting an Appropriations seat, and again relying upon this year’s breakout phenomenon, we did start talking about the “YouTube election” well ahead of most.

But if we can’t even pick a fantasy football team that makes the playoffs, we’re not going to stake our rep on predicting the future. So the answer is yes, they really are that predictable.

As an example of the genre, I have appropriated from Slate the scan of one specimen from the Sept. 1, 1956 New York Times:

As Shafer documents, the phenomenon has all but disappeared from the Times. But on the Internet it lives on — not just on the aptly named Bus Plunge! website, but also, just this afternoon, on the front page of CNN.com:

More on the accident here, but I must warn you — if you enjoy your gallows humor, I don’t recommend clicking through.