Professionals need not apply

Mickey Kaus offers Big Media some advice about blogging:

"Testing," ... "development"? Wow. People actually do those things! And criticize others for not doing them! Sounds like creeping professionalism to me. ... Of the two modes of product launching--(1) Rational, systematic testing and development, with dry runs and mock issues before anything becomes public, or (2) Just start doing it and fix anything that sucks--I've always found that (2) is not only more fun, it's vastly more efficient. Dry runs are soul-killers. Nobody really puts their heart into a mock issue, and there's no substitute for feedback from actual readers.

It seems to me that what the framers had in mind for Freedom of the Press was a lot more like the Blogosphere than the opinion monopoly and political correct desert that the MSM has given us. The people running The Media today are their own worst censors. They can't even grasp the concept that there are other intelligent views out here. How're they going to present any. Hiring Will, Krauthammer and Brooks is all very fine, but it won't take the place of having reporters who ask the questions you don't learn in J-school. Big Business and Blogs just haven't managed to mesh, probably because there's a huge cadre of PR consultants and other "professionals" in the way.