I get enraged and feel like breaking things by this treatment of your work by the Times, and I just read your guys's blogs.

How must you guys, Reynolds, Simon, Johnson, Ace, Allah feel?

How do myriad unfunded independant hobbyists constitute a coordinated effort? They don't.

If you want to know how to coordinate blogs, ask Willis and his chums and their boss.

And THOSE are the fucking dull ass bought-off hacks the Times deigns to talk about?

Ooooooh.

I think somebody's jealous.

Klam is a fictitious name. It is an acronym for Known Liberal Among Misses.

I think in this case you might be a bit off in the "story" that Marshall was working on. He was most likely referring to the "French Forgery" story on which he was "collaborating" with 60 Minutes which was bumped for the National Guard story.

He had, no doubt, also been hyping the National Guard story, but since he didn't have anything to do with that story it's my guess the story that give him legitimacy as a reporter was the one with which he was actually involved. Per the Isikoff article, he was actually upset that his story was bumped in order to air the Guard service story.

Marshall was working on the Niger uranium forgeries; like Jim B above said.

Ace, sorry, but I will have to speak to Colonel Rove and have you drummed out of the "coordinated platoon."

(Heh, I had missed the 'obsessive study' crack.)

Klam was on C-SPAN Washington Journal this morning. Once I saw who it was, I changed to another show (the cover picture for the article featured RW Apple, Wonkette and Jack Jermond, so I had already deduced the slant of the piece), but having seen some of the coverage of the piece, I might catch a replay just to see if any callers call him out on the lack of coservative blogger coverage.

Ace--

Your writing is getting more logical. You should really stop that if you want to get more press.

I DON'T GET IT.

Cheers,
Dave
Garfield Ridge

And not due to, say, Wonkette's estimation of John Kerry's penis size.

Just so long as the discussion doesn't drift -- horribly; nightmarishly -- towards Oliver W.'s dreamy estimations of John Kerry's penis size: I can make it through the rest of today. :)

Gosh darned you and all your stinkin' dogmatism for the so-called 'truth' and such. By gooly the NYT does not appreciate you droning on and on about what you deem 'facts' and you know it. The NYT is dedicated to uncoverine subjective opinions. Why, just last year we uncovered the fact radical feminists support inclusion in a golf club. That's the sort of hard hitting journalism right-wing obsession-filled hacks will never be able to accomplish. Natch.

And what was that "biggest story" of Josh Marshall's life at about that time?

Why, the "explosive Bush TANG documents/Ben Barnes allegations" story, of course!

Why, that's utterly wrong! It was the Niger/yellowcake forgery story, which was actually pre-empted by the TXANG story!

And you wonder why bloggers like yourself don't get proclaimed the future of newsgathering? A retarded monkey could have got that one right, but you didn't. Sheesh.

And, in fact, if you take a look at Josh Marshall's archives -- you know, do some proper 'research' -- you'll see that he links to Powerline and LGF on the memos, and in this post calls out CBS:

If a few qualified experts came forward and said, 'Well, those criticisms don't add up if you know the subject. And the bottom line is that there's nothing about these documents that raise any question about their being produced in the early seventies" that would be plenty for me -- because I don't have the expertise to evaluate the criticisms and the defenses in the face of such expert opinion.

But I'm not hearing anyone say anything like that. In fact, rather the contrary.

The ball is in the court of the publishers of these documents to authenticate them. And so far I'm not hearing any adequate defense.

Feeling dumb enough now? Want to issue an apology to Josh Marshall for being so clueless?

Guys - the NYTimes has just served up your next story. Round 1: "The Newspaper of Record" tries to ignore the Swift Vets' book. Their attempt at news suppression becomes a leading story. Round 2: The Times tries to pretend that the RatherGate forged memos are accurate "in content". The dishonesty of the "fake but accurate" Times becomes the story. Now we are at Round 3 - a crude attempt by the arrogant dimwits at the Times to misrepresent the Blogosphere by marginalizing the part of it that challenges the MSM. This misrepresentation can become the next big story. With a little help from you guys other papers will jump on it. Think WaPo and WSJ to start with.
We shouldn't expect an intellectually corrupt parochial operation like the NYTimes to reform itself. Gotta keep pushing.
BTW - Sunday 9/26/04 front page story - Latino gangs and their tattoos. Vastly significant issue for the nation's future.
Now dig back to page 6 for articles on the probable collapse of NK nuclear weapons talks and Iran's launch of a missile with 1200-mile range shoehorned into the top 2 1/2 inches of a page filled with an ad for carpets and Cinese [sic] Aubusson weave rugs.
Bleaah.

Stumbling over that correction, Ace? It's not difficult -- here's a template you can use:

UPDATE: I was wrong about the story Josh Marshall was working on, and so everything which follows from it in relation to Josh Marshall is also wrong.

In fact, this post is so completely wrong-headed that I withdraw it in its entirety. Sorry. I got ahead of myself with this one.

Until you correct yourself, Ace, everything you say about the MSM and the blogosphere/MSM relationship will be utter hypocrisy.

Um, excuse me, but can you provide evidence Marshall meant something other than the Rather documents story?

Just because you assert something as true doesn't make it so.

Provide the evidence, and we'll see about your correction.

Even if it was the Niger documents, I don't see how that makes it much different. The so-called story hinges on a "fact" that has been thoroughly debunked - the fact that the SOTU sixteen words was driven by documents later revealed to be forgeries (by the French IIRC).

No one argues that the Niger forgeries were forgeries. The SOTU claim was based upon British intelligence which has been vetted by a recent investigation.

So if the CBS story had run, they would still have egg on their face, just a different form.

The CBS claim that it is now too close to the election to run the piece sounds lame. My guess - after botching the Guard story, someone took a perfunctory look at the Niger story, and realized IT didn't stand up to scrutiny.

If Josh really does have a big story - why hasn't he broken it? Does he have marching orders form CBS to coordinate attack,err, stories?

Here's the info you're looking for, Ace.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12827_Joshs_Biggest_Story_Fizzles

Like Phil said though, I fail to see how this improves Marhsall's standing.

Elric/Phil,

Here's the thing: You guys keep saying you think Marshall meant that story. Fine. That's your opinion.

But my opinion is that he meant Rathergate.

I'm not going to retract/correct on the basis of a difference of opinion.

Marshall was hyping this story for weeks. It Just so happened the story was ready to go right during the convention, right when he said he was about to break the story of his life.

I just don't get why you think he meant Niger, and I certainly don't get why everyone seems so sure of that.

So if the CBS story had run, they would still have egg on their face, just a different form.

Er, no. The story was about who forged the Niger docs -- which, incidentally, should now be the story w/r/t the CBS memos. Nice try, though. And it doesn't change for one moment the fact that Ace thought Josh was working on the TXANG story when a blind ferret could have found out that he wasn't -- within about 30 seconds. And that the moment Powerline and LGF raised questions about the TXANG memos, Josh posted on it -- with links -- and said, quite explicitly, that the burden of proof was on CBS News. To the point where lots of his readers called him a traitor for doing so.

And Klem's words on Josh Marshall seem pretty appropriate here:

He can't decide between loving the big media, linking to it, hoping they'll pick up on stories, and hating it, despising it, insulting it, trying to convince you, or himself, that it's the worst thing in the world and that it's ruining American democracy.

Ace seems to be offended by the fact that Powerline and LGF haven't received some kind of validation by the NYTimes in this particular magazine article. After two weeks of mentions on TV and in the press, including a Safire op-ed. So what is it? Does getting a mention in a glossy NYTimes magazine profile matter that much to people who claim to be challenging the hegemony of the MSM?

Because that long open letter certainly seems to suggest that it matters a hell of a lot.

Marshall was hyping this story for weeks. It Just so happened the story was ready to go right during the convention, right when he said he was about to break the story of his life.

I just don't get why you think he meant Niger, and I certainly don't get why everyone seems so sure of that.

Jeebus. Because Josh had been talking about it on his blog for months? Because Newsweek reported that the Niger piece was pulled from 60 Minutes in favor of the TXANG piece, including a comment from an extremely pissed off Josh Marshall? The reason why Josh had 'sources' on the TXANG piece is because his own piece got pulled.

“This is like living in a Kafka novel,” said Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer and a Web blogger who had been collaborating with “60 Minutes” producers on the uranium story. “Here we had a very important, well-reported story about forged documents that helped lead the country to war. And then it gets bumped by another story that relied on forged documents.”

So c'mon, Ace: admit you messed up. Don't go all Dan Rather on us.

You could be right, Ace. I just figured that when he talked about becoming a "real journalist" (does that even have *any* meaning after memogate?), he was talking about the story which he was working with CBS on.

I suppose he could have been working on both. If you have the ear of a CBS producer and you're getting all this Barnes info two weeks before your other story is supposed to hit, then I suppose Marshall could have been started pushing for both. Anyway, I get your point, it's conjecture either way. One of the two (or both) is true and it's equally damning either way.

I think I know this "ahem" guy or at least he has a twin that haunts my ass too :). He does a flurry of emotionally hyperbolic comments then he goes away after a couple days.

Josh Marshall agrees with us about media bias:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_09_26.php#003521

Of course, he thinks it's a conservative bias, and that David Broder is a centrist.

Elric,

Well, Marshall claims he meant the one story and not the other.

I don't know. I don't think the Uranium story would have been advanced by either CBS News or Marshall-- we've known, for quite some time, that a foreign intelligence service planted the forgeries; I linked a couple of articles about that myself.

I don't see how Marshall or CBS News could claim to know whether Italy or France was behind the forgeries. I find it hard to believe that they know, and yet everyone else is still guessing between them.

From what it sounds like to me, the 60 Minutes story was just going to be a digest of what is already known by those who keep up with the news. Doesn't sound like a "big breaking story" to me.

Thank you, Ace, for the correction here and above. It's appreciated, even with those mealy-mouthed caveats.

Truly, though, I suspect that Marshall is even more pissed off at CBS News than you, given that his work is not going to see the light of day any time soon. He got pre-empted by a piece of crap. But no, it wasn't going to be a digest. It included interviews with all the major players in the paper trail, including Rocco Martino, and I hope that Marshall has the balls to go public with it, whether authorized by CBS or not.

As for being a co-ordinated political operative on the attack? I only wish. Then I might get silly puff pieces written about me in the New York Times magazine, tenuously trying to seek out some kind of motivation from childhood trauma. No thanks.