by Calculated Risk on 1/01/2011 07:28:00 PM

There was a nice mention of Calculated Risk this week by Alen Mattich in the WSJ: The Best Economics Blogs. Thank you - I sincerely appreciate the mention!

The first sentence caught my eye:

Only a few years ago, blogs were too outlandish for the mainstream media even to acknowledge, never mind to mention or, shock horror, to quote.

Not all blogs were "outlandish", but they were definitely all considered outlandish! Back before 2007 the MSM would quote econ professors, but not "unknown" bloggers.

My co-blogger Doris "Tanta" Dungey broke down that barrier in March 2007 with her brilliant piece: Media Inquiries Policy. The entire piece is worth reading (I've heard that it is assigned reading in some college journalism courses). An excerpt:

Dear reporters, we quote your stuff periodically, giving credit both to the reporter and the publication, under fair use terms. We have no objection to your returning the favor. If you have an editor who will not allow that, and you think that the problem can be solved by getting one of us to drop our online personas, give you our real names, and say the same thing to you over the phone, so that you can get your editor to accept it as something other than just blogging, which everybody knows is untrustworthy ranting by anonymous nuts, you are making a faulty assumption about the relationship among us, our birthdays, and yesterday. Neither CR nor Tanta wishes to play into a set of assumptions that render what we say on the blog as unworthy of coverage by the Big Media, but what we might say on the phone to Intrepid Reporter as good dirt and straight skinny.

Within a week, Calculated Risk was mentioned in several major publications including the WSJ for the first time. Now econ bloggers are routinely mentioned, and we all should remember to thank Tanta!