KAUS / RUTTEN SMACKDOWN: Mickey Kaus responds to Tim Rutten’s Los Angeles Times screed about weblogs. Excerpt:

In what seems to be an iron law applying to pieces by mainstream journalists huffing about blogger inaccuracy, Rutten’s piece itself contains a non-trivial inaccuracy, attributing to me words (describing how W & B sometimes revealed “unsubstantiated or simply wrong information”) that were actually written by historian Stanley Kutler and were clearly identified as such (see the item in the 6/19 entries below). The misreporting is non-trivial because it conveniently avoids the need for Rutten to mention that it was Kutler, who isn’t a narcissistic blogger, who initially made the point Rutten’s dismissing.. (It goes without saying that if Rutten were a blogger he’d have corrected his mistake by now, but since he works for a “serious newspaper” the falsehood will probably stand uncorrected forever.)

Advantage: Kaus! There’s a lot more in Kaus’s response, too. Follow his links to read extensive and unflattering responses to Rutten’s piece from Matt Welch and Ken Layne.