Bloggers: The New Players in Reporting on Public Philanthropies

William Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal in Washington, has penned a path breaking article for the Chronicle of Philanthropy on the role bloggers have played, and will continue to play, in reporting on the formerly insular world of public foundations. Titled "In a World of Bloggers, Foundations Can Expect More Scrutiny," it examines the eruption of Pewgate this past March, and argues that liberal philanthropies, which heretofore enjoyed unquestioned trust from the mainstream press, can "now expect implicit political inclinations to be vetted far more thoroughly and publicly than before."

To download a copy of the article, which will be available on the Chronicle's web site this coming Monday, click on the link below.

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The advent of blogging poses the greatest challenges for those segments of society that previously enjoyed the least amount of scrutiny from the mainstream media. That's why the MSM itself has reacted with such hostility and condescension to blogging, per se: of all the professions, it has always been in charge of deciding what gets said about whom, and when. With the cameras turned in the opposite direction, so to speak, media bigwigs, and the elites they earlier supported by accepting their positions at face value, find themselves facing a level of scrutiny that, only a few years ago, they never imagined would visit them.

As William Schambra argues, few segments of society have received less scrutiny than our public foundations, whose innocence has been presumed, and whose research is rarely questioned. As the eruption of Pewgate demonstrated this past March, that situation has changed, and for good.

Last, let me acknowledge Mr. Schambra's generosity in mentioning this blog's contributions to the coverage given to the Pew story. Many more blogs and web-based outlets played invaluable roles, as they doubtless will when future stories are covered.