The P-I has been a mystery to me. I struggled with their dismally misguided coverage of the Bellevue crane accident [p-i] and still struggle with their unusual and unabated focus on celebrity gossip (and most recently, SPI). But just when I think I should give them up for dead they go and do something like report about local cops shirking DUI’s [p-i] (which was some of the best local journalism in years). Then The Big Blog, still young, experimenting, and finding its way, discovers its voice in the midst of a tragic and complicated story (a la SLOG during the Capitol Hill Massacre) involving Seattleite and UW student Amanda Knox.

For a communications junkie like me, it’s been fascinating to watch how different news outlets have reported on this case. At one extreme, as Dan Gonsiorowski at Seattlest wrote, European papers rushed to convict Knox of murder using the “proof” of her writings and pictures on MySpace. At the other end of the spectrum the Times, citing an internal policy, refused to identify Knox by name nor link to her then public MySpace page [times]. But right in the middle - walking a razor thin line between exploitation and a strange sort of denial - was the P-I and its Big Blog.

[more after the jump]


First there was a timely and straight forward report on the crime and Knox’s role including interviews with her local friends [p-i]. It was succinct and non-sensational and provided a much more coherent timeline of events than any of the European papers managed. Then there was a follow-up post on Knox by Monica Guzman of The Big Blog [p-i]. By the time of her initial post, articles in newspapers all over Europe were linking to Knox’s MySpace and Facebook pages while jumping to wild conclusions about her character and the inevitability of her guilt. It even hit MetaFilter as a strained analogy about the difference between MySpace and Facebook users [m-f].

In her post, Guzman linked to Knox’s online profiles but refused to fall into the trap of interpreting much about what her writings or pictures might mean. It was a simple and newsworthy post written in a sensitive way that provoked surprisingly thoughtful comments from readers (before devolving into something else entirely like most comment threads do). Guzman later followed up with a post that might bode well for the future of news media. She asked a simple question of readers: Is the news media being fair to Knox? [p-i] This question is why The Big Blog is the most important blog in Seattle. Sure, one of us here at Seattle Metblogs could’ve posed that question (or Seattlest or SLOG, etc.) but it wouldn’t have carried nearly the implications. After all, we’re on the other side. As much as blogs have demanded change (and attention) from the mainstream media, we’re not the mainstream media. As important as we think our role is as a check on them (among other things) most of our gadfly rants go unnoticed and disappear off the page within a day never to be seen again. So, it’s exciting to see that the mainstream media itself is taking a page from blogs and reflecting, in real-time, about what its coverage means. It’s also vitally important both for the purpose it serves the public and for the survival of the paper itself. In many ways, blogs are a response to what many perceive as a failure by the mainstream to serve the interests of the public. Put simply, a trust was broken. The Big Blog is a big step toward mending that broken trust.