Praise for Patterico *

Jay Rosen, chairman of the NYU journalism department, has a piece up at his Press Think blog giving credit to anti-LAT blogger Patterico for pushing the Times to "even up" and do a story on Justice Ginsburg's outside speeches after the paper wrote critical of Justice Scalia. The post is long and can't be easily summarized, but it praises Patterico and the folks at Oh, That Liberal Media for getting something right:

In the category of media watch blogging, his work last week was exemplary. It was also an act of public service to other readers of the Times. He e-mailed what he knew about news the paper had missed, alerting it: you have a problem of fairness here. The reader's rep zapped it over to the national desk. One of the reporters on the Scalia story e-mailed Patterico, who sent him stuff. And bada-bing, another front page story for the two writers, which was also a way to demonstrate that the LA Times does not play favorites. The symmetry of the circumstances with Scalia and Ginsberg made it an easy call...

My comments are these. The blogger said to the LA Times: It goes both ways, guys. He wasn't sure either speech was such a big deal. "But if they're going to run one story, they have to run the other. That much seems obvious." Obvious, yes, but not what the Liberal Media thesis led him to predict.

I tend to find Patterico's rants too politically motivated to get anything from them, but maybe I should check him out more often.

* Update: Patterico says in the comments that he likes publicity, and he's getting it: Harry Shearer (actor, writer, radio commentator et al) writes Romenesko to point out that he has been using "Dog Trainer" on "Le Show" as his term of non-endearment for the L.A. Times for three years (and Patterico credits him).