A milestone for the 6th Estate

The 6th Estate congratulates Garrett M. Graff, the young editor of FishbowlDC, a blog covering the news media in Washington, D.C.

On March 4, Graff became the first blogger to be credentialed for the White House. He joined the daily press briefing in the West Wing on March 7, which he described in his blog as "surreal" but "anti-climatic."

Other newspapers covering the White House publish blogs but Graff is the first person to be credentialed to write about the White House specifically for a blog. In other words, there's no print version of it unless you print it up from the web site. FishbowlDC is not owned by a traditional media company but by Mediabistro, a Washington, D.C. based-company providing employment and career services to journalists, editors, writers, photographers and artists.

Graff, 23, who previously was an editor of The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper for Harvard University, is the son of Chris Graff, a 20 plus year veteran of the Associated Press currently working as its Vermont correspondent, and grandson of a former drama critic for the old New York Herald Tribune.

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3/11/2005 --UPDATE -- From the "Say it ain't so for the future of blogging!" department by way of the conservative oriented Cybercast News Service and senior staff writer Jeff Johnson comes information that Garrett M. Graff, editor of FishbowlDC, is a former deputy national press secretary for Howard Dean's 2004 failed presidential campaign. Dean is a former governor of Vermont. Graff's father is the AP's correspondent for Vermont. Unfortunately, Graff's biography page on FishbowlDC confirms the information and adds that Garrett M. Graff was also then-Governor Dean's first webmaster. Only way I could see this as worse for the future of blogging would be if he had a relative who reported on Halliburton, got a job on Vice President Dick Cheney's campaign and then a seat in the daily West Wing press gaggle -- and the liberal press got hold of that information. There may be no impropriety but there doesn't have to be these days under the rules already set up years ago by the Clintonistas. Oh crap, does that mean I now have to change the headline of this post to "A millstone for the 6th Estate?"

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The Associated Press is a non-profit organization, a sort of "club" for media. The AP calls itself a "press co-operative" because the articles and stories distributed by it are not only produced by its own writers, editors, photographers, etc., but also are originated by its "members" and distributed to other members. They cooperate by sharing stories and cooperate by sharing the cost of operating the AP by paying fees to cover its overhead. That's one of the ways how stories get around the world. The story you read in your local newspaper, hear on your local radio news program or watch on your local tv station, may get picked up for distribution and sent regionally or around the world.

But the public or the reader doesn't really play a significant part in all this unless they are the subject of the particular story. The reader may write a letter to the newspaper about an article, but that letter and, most importanly, the viewpoint contained within it usually is not distributed unless the viewpoint somehow becomes a part of a follow-on to the story.

The internet has changed that aspect of journalism, particularly blogs. That little section below the post that says "comment" allows readers' viewpoints to become a part of the story.

A good example of this is a 2003 post on the emerging 6th estate from the blog Smart MOBS.

Of particular note is the commented reply to the post by reader Scott Alexander who recognizes this new form of mass media to be true co-operative journalism where all involved may participate if they so wish. The ability of this commenting function allows realtime feedback and story development from the writer, subject(s) and audience/reader/anyone concerned -- a true participatory potential.