I think this is absolutely great.

Be looking forward to the blogs.

Randy, I'm not sure how this will work either, but I intend to give it my best shot. A week or so ago, Michael Silence posted a request from Jack McElroy to enlist some local bloggers to cover the coverage:

The newspaper will be continuing to cover [the trial] but it clearly has a conflict of interest. So Editor Jack McElroy asked me if I'd post something seeking bloggers to follow, or monitor, our coverage of that trial. ... Our plans aren't real specific because we want to leave some elbow room for constructive feedback. You don't have to be at the trial to do this but you can be if you want.

I volunteered via email. Michael's reply was brief and non-specific, which I think was sort of the point. In the interest of full disclosure, I feel comfortable quoting that email here. He said:

Don't feel limited to just covering the coverage. Other commentary is certainly welcome. We left a lot of elbow room to let each blogger define what they do.

And that was pretty much the extent of it.

I'm certain there will be a tsunami of local commentary on the trial regardless, so in that sense, McElroy's call for freelance ombudsmen seems a little superfluous. However, I think the larger point is the "interesting experiment," as you put it, of newspapers reaching out to bloggers for critique.

That's got to be a first.

This trial will drag on for weeks, I'm sure. I wish I could take the time off from work to sit in the courtroom live-blogging it, but that's just not a realistic option for me. So, I suppose that means my job is to examine the KNS coverage of the trial for obvious bias and to collate it with coverage and commentary from other sources. The local TV stations, the Shopper, MetroPulse, and local bloggers will undoubtedly have tons to say on the matter, so I'm sure I'll have lots to compare against Jamie Satterfield's reportage.

I haven't spoken to David or Rich about it, so I don't know what approach they plan to take.

Interesting. It would be good if someone other than Jamie could sit through the whole thing. But then my guess is that Jamie won't even sit through every moment.

Jamie's coverage is ok, but sometimes I think she works too damned hard to get those cutesy leads. And sometimes, I just don't think they are appropriate.

I think getting objective coverage, even with this blogger angle, is going to be very tough, maybe impossible, becuase so many people have formed opinions about both the KNS and the commission. My guess is that sumliminal (sp) opinions will come out in all kinds of strange ways.

pgs

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

...Satterfield's breathless true crime style of coverage

Is anyone else "over" JS's over-the-top smarmy-tainment? Please, ma'am, just the facts. Leave the snarkiness to us experts. That's what anonymous blog comments are for.