Products of the Information Age, blogs are new forms of media that have turned modern journalism on its head and continue to redefine the profession with each passing day.

Two things are certain as blogs escalate in popularity: one, millions of kids will read them, savoring the speed and muscularity of the writing and two, their parents will despise them, longing for the trustworthy days of Walter Cronkite and newspapers.

This generalization is no better expressed than by Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author whose opinions on blogging border fascism and misogyny.

Before I continue, I should be clear; Buzz Bissinger is one of my heroes, as the man is a flat-out masterful writer. Author of the legendary sports book Friday Night Lights, Bissinger won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Additionally, he has authored a number of legendary Vanity Fair articles, including “Shattered Glass,” which was adapted into a 2003 film, and “Gone with the Wind,” a chronicle of the rise and fall of the racing horse Barbaro that has already been optioned by Universal Studios.

Each of his pieces sparkle with concision and detail, as they include the kind of investigative reporting and narrative zeal that all reporters dream of capturing. Bissinger possesses an uncanny ability to choose the right word for the right time, perfectly summarizing the emotions and depths of his subjects in a clean, unpretentious manner (while still sounding damn beautiful).

I have the utmost respect for Bissinger’s craft; however, I completely and utterly disagree with his stance on blogging, a highly ignorant view that, as previously stated, immaculately summarizes the parental misconceptions of the blogging world.

In an April 2008 appearance on Bob Costas’ HBO show Costas Now, Bissinger all but steamrolled over Will Leitch, a popular sportswriter and New York magazine contributor who served as the editor of the sensational sports blog Deadspin when the show aired.

Bissinger was, along with Leitch and NFL player Braylon Edwards, a part of a round table discussion (things get interesting at 14:20) moderated by Costas that focused on the ascent of blogs in the public’s sports conscience, questioning both the positives and negatives of medium. As Costas made clear in his opening remarks, while blogging offered a newfound level of freedom for writers and average citizens, the tone and aggressiveness of the writing can be offensive, to say the least.

Leitch spoke first, defending not only Deadspin, which occasionally acts as a New York Post of the online sports world, publishing risqué photographs of athletes and spreading hearsay, but also the ethics and actions of blogging. After Leitch concluded his statements, Bissinger responded by telling Leitch, “I really think you’re full of shit.”

Using the charming introduction as a starting point, Bissinger launched in a tirade that had the internet buzzing for weeks, claiming that blogs were dedicated to “cruelty, journalistic dishonesty, (and) speed,” citing examples of profane and crude writing on Deadspin and angrily questioning Leitch, “how can you be proud of this!?” When Leitch responded that blogging was “a new voice,” Bissinger injected, “It’s a DISGUSTING voice.”

Since the confrontation, Bissinger has apologized, noting that his arguments were nullified by his tone. Leitch defended himself the best he could, but he was never going to change Bissinger’s mind.

Leitch, age 33 and technologically savvy, is the polar opposite of Bissinger, 54 and a product of the newspaper age. A key thing to remember about Bissinger is his arguments are those of a writer, and a classically trained one at that. A student of the University of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at Harvard, Bissinger is an academic as much as he is an author, and this classic, or, “old” style of composition meshes with the new style of blogging about as well as mayonnaise and strawberry jam. For Bissinger, blogs will dumb down our society, forever altering our intellectual landscape to a point we will be unable to recover from.

However, Bissinger misses two key historical points that contradict his assessment.

First, there is history. Our country has a beautiful repetition of producing groundbreaking phenomena that rivets our youths while infuriating our elderly, who bitterly deprecate the new medium and insist that our culture will never recover.

It happened with jazz. It happened with television. It happened with rock n’ roll. It happened with hip-hop. And now, it is happening with blogging. While different crises continue to present themselves, however, one thing remains true: our country survives and we persevere through all the “shit” of the new, modern era.

Yet, even with history, we still insist that the latest convention to challenge the status quo will forever leave us fat, drunk, and stupid. I myself wonder from time to time how my generation will look when we’re pushing 50 as products of the videogame/information age, but the history is clear: we survived the devil’s music of rock n’ roll, just like we survived the devil’s music of jazz in the 1920s, and we WILL survive blogging. While the intricate details of the survival will certainly be debated in the coming years, the fire and brimstone rhetoric of blogging’s opponents will stand as an historical document of extreme opposition to relatively harmless societal developments.

Second, Bissinger forgets that blogs are a relatively new phenomenon, considering how long newspapers have been in existence. Once again, let us utilize history to aid us in our conquest of defense.

Newspapers were not always beacons of truth and trust. In fact, they were downright sleazy, selling propaganda as news and inflating stories to such a level that the newsprint nearly burst. It is a great irony, really, that we journalism students are taught the strict ethics and morals of the profession, when the major building blocks of newspapers, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, were the Rupert Murdochs of their day, manufacturing stories and even WARS to sell papers (Spanish-America, anybody?).

Furthermore, Pulitzer’s name is used for the most prestigious prize in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize, and he is credited as the father of the modern college-level journalism school, as he originally envisioned the concept of a school of journalism in 1892. Pulitzer approached Columbia College in New York with his dream, but the school turned Pulitzer down flat and his concept staled as a floor plan. Columbia was nice enough to accept $2 million dollars Pulitzer left the university in his will, and they used it to finally set up a School of Journalism in 1912, four years after the University of Missouri launched the first J-school in the world in 1908.

So newspapers, like blogs, clearly had some dark days during their first few steps out of the delivery room, with the very forefathers of the profession’s education boasting a laundry list of sensationalism that makes Rupert Murdoch seem honest. Though a large portion of bloggers are not journalists by trade, the rapid rise in newspaper quality during the 20th century supports the hypothesis that blogging will see a similar rise in quality, especially considering journalism schools across the country (including my own Ohio University) include some form of blogging in their online journalism courses.

One final note on quality: Bissinger himself admits that there are some “good blogs, but they are few and far between.” And he is correct, as there are some fantastic blogs on the web, including The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan, The Huffington Post (which has featured Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Alec Baldwin, and Paul Begala, among others), and this blog, Frivolous Frenzies of a Fatuous Fanatic, which is written by a brilliant newcomer named Peter Ricci.

Furthermore, the 2008 Presidential Election proved the painfully honest reality that a well-run, well-organized blog like The Daily Dish or Glenn Greenwald’s blog on Salon.com can beat the pants off a morning newspaper, publishing groundbreaking revelations regarding politicians and their statements. Some of the more shocking information regarding Sarah Palin—her past as Mayor of Wasilla, her uncomfortable relationship with the religious right, her…Niemen Marcus shopping spree—were uncovered by blogs.

There are good blogs just as there are good newspapers. There are bad blogs just as there are bad newspapers. The difference lies in age and training.

When a newspaper hires a reporter, there are several expectations to the process. They must write well, write fast, and have a smidgen of experience doing both. No such standard is set in the blogging world, where any Internet user with a valid email address can establish a blog in practically five minutes.

Should starting a blog, therefore, be a more difficult process? Should websites such as BlogSpot and Twitter begin demanding proof of journalism credentials, or proof of a college diploma? No, they should not. Blogging provides an opportunity to the middleman, the everyday citizen who always lacked the power and resources to get their work published.

Blogs, and the way they extend freedom of expression, are as American as football on Sunday and butter on potatoes, and we should not discourage the blogosphere because of a few rotten apples. As more professionally trained journalists establish blogs and more newspapers adapt to the changing landscape, the overall quality of blogs will improve. The writing will become more precise, the reporting more accurate, and the honesty more respected by the public.

And that is where we come in. It is our job to be the judge, to read these blogs, and to inspire its writers. As Leitch stated on Costas Now, the blogosphere is a meritocracy. WE decide which blogs are the most widely read; therefore, let’s read the best blogs!