Here's news for NY Times editor Bill Keller

( A special welcome to visitors from Betsy's Page and Mudville Gazette open post )

Do bloggers report news or just recycle it?

An MSM journalist recently gave readers New York Times executive editor Bill Keller’s answer: "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough."

Keller’s answer may be genuine, but it’s hardly accurate.

Bloggers were the lead reporters on the Jayson Blair/ Howell Raines scandal, one of the worst to hit journalism in the last 50 years. And Dan Rather admits bloggers took the lead on what just about everyone but Rather calls “the discredited” CBS 60 Minutes II Texas Air National Guard memo story.

Blog reporting happens every day. It’s often ahead of MSM and more comprehensive as well.

A recent example involves racist and genocidal statements delivered by a scholar at an Oct. 14 forum sponsored in conjunction with Minister Louis Farrahkan’s “Million More Movement” march in Washington. The forum was held on the campus of Howard University and broadcast live by C-SPAN.

MSM appears to have largely ignored the story.

But on Wednesday, Oct. 19, Jon Sanders, an editor at The John Locke Foundation, a center right think tank in Raleigh, North Carolina posted at The Locker Room, the foundation’s blog. Sanders began:

I'm hearing about comments made by a Kamau Kambon on C-SPAN for the "Millions More Movement." Nothing in any mainstream media that I can find so far, but the Freepers are among those discussing it.

In that post and another the following day, Sanders reported that Kambon, a Raleigh bookstore owner and recent faculty member at North Carolina State University, had made a number of racist and genocidal statements. Among them, that black people needed to decide:

how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.

Throughout Thursday, Oct 20, Sanders did what good reporters are supposed to do: he got out front on the story and dug. Sanders learned that Kambon had taught at the university as recently as the Spring ’05 semester. Sanders subsequently posted a statement from the university Provost, Larry Nielsen:

"The remarks recently attributed to one of our former employees do not in any way represent the values and standards of the university. This type of speech is counter to any reasoned discussion on the issue of race relations, and is absolutely unacceptable in the NC State community."

On Thursday evening, Mike Adams, a University of North Carolina – Wilmington professor published an online column at Townhall.com in which he summarized the story and gave readers contacts.

On Friday, Oct. 21, MSM was still silent but bloggers were covering the story.

Michelle Malkin told her readers what had happened in a post: "WE HAVE TO EXTERMINATE WHITE PEOPLE".She linked to Sanders and Adams.

Bloggers who live in the Raleigh area joined Sanders on the story. Besides providing excellent summary reports, they added important depth to the story.

For example, while as far as I know Kambon has never publicly made the sorts of statements he made at Howard, it’s widely known in Raleigh that he rejects racial reconciliation. Kambon views race relations in America in terms of blacks versus whites.

So at Betsy’s Page, she asked some very “to the point questions” about how and why NC State hired Kambon.

The Pirate Cove urged readers to contact Raleigh’s major newspaper, The News & Observer, which had failed to report anything on the story.

Right in Raleigh reported that Kambon, in addition to advocating racial genocide was an opponent of the death penalty.

Friday evening, Fox News became the first MSM news organization I’m aware of to report on Kambon’s remarks, something I'm sure will come as no surprise to Bill Keller.

On Saturday, Oct. 22, Confederate Yankee told readers he was sorry to be late getting to the story. He then provided a fine service: A survey of Raleigh area news organizations’ coverage of Kambon’s racist and genocidal remarks.

Also on Saturday, Raleigh’s N&O finally reported the story. But unlike Confederate Yankee, The N&O didn’t tell its readers it was sorry to be late doing so.

The N&O's news story, the only one on Kambon's call for racial genocide it has published, began:

Political Web sites throughout the country are crackling this week in response to statements by a former instructor at N.C. State University, who said blacks must "exterminate white people off the face of the planet."

No explanation was offered for why The N&O and the MSM had been so silent.

There’s more that can be said about blogger reporting on this important story.

But this post, which I’m sending to Editor Keller, ought to give him enough to chew on for now.

If Keller responds, I'll publish his reply in full.