Damek.

I’ve enjoyed following the whole Jeff “Gannon” Guckert story as it unfolded from those doing the research to uncover it on dKos. I’m not even going to bother linking to the numerous dKos diaries that documented the various stages in the investigation so far. If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, NY’s very own Rep. Louise Slaughter has written a letter to the President requesting an explanation for the events which pretty much sums them up perfectly, so you can go read that.

The most interesting part about this story to me is the various failures and successes of both traditional journalists and bloggers along the way. Here’s a guy with no background in journalism, thrust right into the White House press world, apparently to serve as a safety net for the WH in press briefings. Why didn’t other WH journalists ever catch this? Why does it have to be bloggers who look into these things? On the other hand, bloggers didn’t catch any of it until with the last month or so, thanks to a report done by Media Matters. For about a year prior to that, it was a “traditional” journalist who was writing about this: Dan Froomkin.

So bloggers did a ton of work on uncovering the story, but they didn’t catch on to it in the first place until a traditional reporter had already written about the questionable nature of Mr. Gannon for months, and finally until a relatively traditional watchdog group highlighted the character. I’m not sure I can imagine a regular blogger “discovering” a story like this, and I’m not sure I can imagine any of the few true journalists left in the world having the time and energy, not to mention the permission, to fully follow a story like this in the way bloggers did. Perhaps journalism needs bloggers to save it from itself, but bloggers need the existing system to feed their primed-and-ready keyboards something to do? Just food for thought.

I just feel sorry for Mr. Gannon (er, Guckert). Here’s a frat boy who had to go to a state college, appears to not have had a lot of luck with his various jobs and endeavors, including his brush with military life — and then he lands work as a right-wing mouthpiece. He seems to have been utterly used and then tossed aside when things got icky. Assuming things really are the way they look to me right now, I wonder if he will ever fully realize, if he doesn’t already, just how thoroughly used he was? The thing that saddens me is: guys like him are everywhere, being taken for a ride by the right-wing machine, being sold ideas, politicians and policies that ultimately just end up hurting them. And most don’t get the brief boost of being used as a fake press mouthpiece.