Emmett Tyrrell gives away the ugly little secret--American journalists hate each other.

If the members of the National Football League harbored as much hatred for their fellow football savages as the journalists harbor for their fellow journalists, no football game would begin without a thorough weapons search.

Is it just me, or is there much more collegiality in the blogosphere than in paid journalism?

I suspect that you are correct. I also suspect that the reason is bloggers in no way impede the ability of other bloggers to make a living. With journalists, competition can have monetary consequences. That tends to increase the general level of animosity.

I imagine much of the collegiality stems from the fact that there is roughly 90% agreement on major issues.

That's true of the paid media, too. It's just that the agreement is on different issues...

After all, ninety percent of the Washington press corps voted for Bill Clinton in 1992.

I think it's a combination of the two factors -- lack of competition for money, AND general philosophical agreement. Remove either of these, and the blogosphere gets ugly. Which could be cool.

Gotta wonder which journalists we mean here. The Washington press corps and nationally prominent TV newspeople are some fraction of 1% of all the people who do journalism for a living. Most cities have a local monopoly in daily print media and only modest competition in local TV news. Radio is competitive to the point where there are few high-paying on-air positions, but I've never heard anybody talk about animosity between them. Do talk radio hosts hate each other?

Most journalists-vs-bloggers analogies are apples-to-oranges comparisons (or apples-to-anemones, or apples-to-albatrosses). One thing's for sure: I don't hate other bloggers, or "disesteem" them, or feel _schaudenfreude_ when they're miserable.

And I don't agree with them on 90% of issues, though it may be above 50%, and I've had huge, nasty arguments with people who I did have 90% agreement with.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I don't think that I'm a genius or that other bloggers are mediocrities, and I don't think they're going to "do me in." Segue to Today's Fragmentary Bible Verse, Philippians 2:3b: "... in humility count others better than yourselves." *That's* what blogging feels like to me, and it feels *good*, not insecure or humiliating.

Still waiting for my first piece of hate mail after six months of blogging ...

I suspect that it's the ones that Mr. Tyrrell knows best--the inside-the-Beltway crowd.

Bloggers aren't in competition with each other yet -- either for readers (most blog readers read a lot of them) or career prospects. When money and career-related prestige are on the line, things get more serious.

The distinction between bloggers and journalists is essentially that between Gentlemen and Players, in the old sporting sense. We can afford to be nice to each other, have codes of honour and so on. The journos can't (unless they're trust fund kids, in which case they have no excuse).

Don't forget that Washington journalists are in a weird position. They can be highly visible, considered at the top of their profession, yet restrained by their access to power to say and write what they really want to say. If they want to stay in the White House press pool and get all those bennies and press trips and cool access to the POTUS, you'd better just chow down on the press releases, interview the usual suspects and don't make waves.

Remember, Watergate wasn't broken from the White House press room.