Morley Safer on blogs

NEW YORK — CBS News veteran Morley Safer says he trusts citizen journalism as much as he would trust citizen surgery.

The "60 Minutes" correspondent was honored by Quinnipiac University Wednesday with an award named for one of Safer's old bosses, Fred Friendly. He accepted it with a warning that the business problems of newspapers threaten all of journalism, and the public's precarious right to know.

Safer said good journalism needs structure and responsibility. He considers the blogosphere no alternative, saying it is crammed with the ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard.

Safer is 77 now and works part time. He says he has no intention of giving up what he considers the best job in the world.

I absolutely agree that "good journalism needs structure and responsibility" but you don't always find this in the print media either. I also agree that the blogosphere is "crammed with the ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard" but this doesn't negate another fact, that good responsible journalism also can be found in cyberspace. The problem online, of course, is a problem of size and numbers -- since there are no journalistic standards, say, how do you find the decent from the ravings? You search, and it takes time.

I've thought for a long time that what cyberspace needs is some bright young critic to put together an online periodical that is an anthology of the best on the web each month. And then s/he needs a competitor doing the same thing. This is a service in demand (maybe it's already being met and I haven't found it) -- and with POD magazines so easy now, maybe there even should be a hard copy of it. A Readers Digest of serious journalism and creative writing on the web, monthly or quarterly. If I were younger, much younger, such a project would be very tempting.