• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 16, 2007

You gotta love the fact that bloggers are telling CBS News what journalism is and what it isn't.

Apparently, Regret the Error.com, which reports on issues of accuracy and ethics in the media, called out Katie Couric on her minute-long commentary that started with the words: "I still remember when I got my first library card." 

Not only was the piece not written by Couric -- a problem in itself -- but the CBS producer who wrote it plagiarized much of it from a Wall Street Journal column by Jeffrey Zaslow that was published in March.

What can you say? You pay someone $15 million a year, and you should get near perfection. Of course, you don't get that from someone making $80,000 or $60,000 a year.

The fact that a site with its own bloggers should catch that slip suggests that some bloggers at least try to make good journalism -- even if it's the old-fashioned way.

Bloggers --  that new term for those who have opinion, commentary, grunts, and rants -- have taken some abuse over the recent years, though some new blogging associations are looking to inspire better reporting and writing standards.

Sure, anyone can have opinions -- but facts should be held up to a brighter light. Of course, maybe sometime, Couric did muse about her first library card.  But apparently it was Zaslow's card.

Couric is still in last place in the ratings. That kind of stuff only make her $15 million contract and pretty face more visible to the reality of the world. That's why, if she were in the U.K., she would be identified by the pretty title of "news reader."

If she really is the managing editor, then she should write. This isn't a daytime talk show or a late-night gabfest. It's the news.

Still, will Couric write her own stuff in the future?  Not exactly. CBS says she writes some of her material, as well as producers -- TV being a collaborative medium, according to CBS.

But when it comes to first-person accounts, perhaps that stuff should be left out.