Mary Katharine Ham has some thoughts on the latest writings and retouchings from Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell:

The mainstream media’s response to the allegations from blogs has been more along the lines of Greg Mitchell’s, editor of Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine whose mission it is to cover “all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.”

Mitchell’s response to accusations from bloggers—instead of answering the charges and refuting evidence—was to get very defensive, claim that “rightwing bloggers” were only attempting to smear photojournalists as a group, and then proceed to smear rightwing bloggers as a group for daring to point out the dishonesty of some photojournalists, and raise questions about how business is conducted in the Middle East.

The subtext of Mitchell's rantings about the starboard side of the Blogosphere isn't just that he loathes the bloggers on the right analyzing his work--it's that he's not too crazy about journalism itself about being accountable to rightwing readers in general.

Each blog that analyzes Big Media's faults has hundreds to a few thousand readers, and for the biggest blogs, tens of thousands--to hundreds of thousands--of readers, for the simple reason that although we joke that eventually, everyone will have his or her blog, for now, there are far more consumers than authors. And every one of those readers, and the people in their circles of influence, whether they're posting within Internet forums, or simply chatting while hanging around the proverbial office water cooler, is finding out just how smug the elite media feels, especially when it's asked to be accountable.

There was more than a hint of that same attitude in the response of the L.A. Times' Michael Hiltzik (he of the sock puppetry) to Hugh Hewitt last year:

HH: If you think the L.A. Times is healthy, and you don't know why it isn't, I can't help you. I really can't. You cannot heal what you cannot get...

MH: Well, luckily, I don't think we're not turning to you for our help.

HH: What was that?

MH: I said luckily, we're not turning to you for our help.

HH: Or to people who listen to me for subscriptions, right?

MH: Well, I guess not.

HH: All right. That's what I thought.

MH: All right.

HH: Michael, thank you for that last, late-arriving, but nevertheless much welcome burst of candor. If you're listening, the L.A. Times does not want you to subscribe.

Peggy Noonan reached a similar conclusion about CBS's decision to hire Katie Couric:

Is the appointment of Katie an acknowledgement by CBS that it doesn't feel it has to care anymore about political preferences, that the existence of Fox News Channel has in effect freed up the network broadcasts to be what you and I might call more politically tendentious and they might call edgy? In a fractured media environment where everyone can have a voice, why wouldn't the broadcast networks take the new freedom as new license? After all, if America is one big niche market, liberals make up a big niche.

I'm wondering how the network news divisions are viewing the lay of the land. The answer will tell us something about the future American media environment.

Does the tone of the editor of a major house organ of the American media also tell us about how news editors in general view the lay of the land?

If so, as I've said before, welcome to the Post-Objective Media.