Press Talk: Online info — from soup to nuts

Is anybody home?

Who doesn’t love the Internet, right?

Well …

Anyone out there a fan of the TV show “Boston Legal?” It’s a smartly written series about a high-powered quirky law firm. It often weaves in current events.

Take the latest episode. Attorney Alan Shore — played by James Spader — takes on an employer who fired one of his workers because she voted for Senator John McCain.

The employer’s position was — in essence — that if his employee had any sense at all, she would have realized that McCain was the wrong choice.

Shore’s defense of the employee? Americans have the right to vote for whomever they want. And every American can make that choice no matter how uninformed or unintelligent it is.

To help support his argument, Shore pointed to where many Americans get their news.

“People forgo newspapers for the Internet, where — instead of relying on credentialed journalists — they turn to these bloggers, sort of entry-level life forms that, intellectually, have yet to emerge from the primordial soup.”

Yikes!

Objection, your honor! I want to stand up for my blogger friends. In fact, we have several bloggers connected to The Columbian who are excellent.

The others out there? Well, come on, surely if you spoon up some of that soup, you’ll find something of worth. Right? So give them a chance!

Enough of my unwavering defense of bloggers. What I liked more about the Shore statement was his support of the importance of news from newspapers.

The point Shore is making is that newspapers are constantly vetting and editing news to give readers solid information. And as this crazy world of ever-expanding information continues, we all are looking for someone to make sense of it all. And that’s us.

As information overload continues on the Internet, newspapers will be looked at as a place of consistent credible information.

Newspapers, in fact, have always had credibility as their main focus.

Another important function of newspapers is to sort information. If there are thousands of stories out there on a topic, do you want to sort through those yourself, or would you like someone else to do it? Again, that’s us.

The Internet — for better or for worse — is a free-for-all. Never before has the phrase “buyer beware” been more important than when tasting … the soup.

There’s also a free-for-all going on with story comments on most Web sites. Ours as well. And some of them are, well, a little on the edge.

So an unsuspecting person might be reading a story on www.columbian.com and when he gets to the end … bam! Someone has thrown a hand grenade into the comments section.

We continually try to steer folks to be passionate and constructive, but there always are a few who think cheap shots are the way to go. There are plenty of Web sites out there that simply live on cheap shots. But we’d like ours to — again — be passionate and constructive.

One of the ideas we’re considering is to move our story comments into our forum section. Forums are a place where specific communities are formed to chat about a common interest.

Yes, some of these forums get a little carried away, but at least if you venture into the forum area, you mostly know what you’re getting into.

Hey, most all of us wish everyone in a society would have a level of respect for others. Sometimes I get so worked up about it I can only say one thing.

Nuts!

Lou Brancaccio is The Columbian’s editor. Reach him at 360-735-4505 or lou.brancaccio@columbian.com.