By Jerry Ceppos

    The Los Angeles Times has demonstrated again why regular people just don’t understand journalists. The Times wrote in an editorial:
         “…Google now is doing yet another thing that’s bound to get under journalists’ skin. This month, it announced plans to let people and organizations comment on the stories written about them. For example, if The Times ran another exposé on conflicts of interest within the Food and Drug Administration’s drug-approval process, Google News would provide a forum for the FDA and any researchers or drug manufacturers implicated in the story to respond, unedited.”
    The Times argues that Google’s plan isn’t journalism. It may not be, but it’s giving readers, even if they’re not objective readers, a chance to reply to a story in an unfiltered way. Actually, forget the filter. Many readers can’t figure out how to break down the walls of the newsroom to comment on a story in any way, filtered or not.
    Google has a good idea. And the Times overlooks the fact that many newspaper sites already allow readers to comment on stories—another sign that journalism, even if the Times doesn’t call it that, slowly is crawling off of its perch and thinking like regular people.