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Above the Law's next move

By Mark Obbie

Legal Times' blog reports that Above the Law's David Lat is getting a promotion. He's moving from D.C. to NYC to take a broader role at ATL's parent company, Breaking Media. He tells BLT he'll still write for the law-gossip blog, but he's in the market for a writer whose interest and location may take the blog in new directions. Let's hope so. The direction I recommend is called "reporting." I like Lat and sometimes find his writing amusing, even occasionally informative. But he breaks very little actual news. Mostly he does that blogger thing of feeding off real news organizations. And when he does pretend to report, it's often the weakest form of the art: repeating rumors without checking them out, as I noted here, here, and here. I  even fantasized about firing him for it here. He brags about the lack of standards on his admittedly robust reader comments. And he's taken to running advertorial posts. Yuck. It all adds up to a missed opportunity. He has the youth vote. He's squandered it so far on pranks and lame, superficial fact gathering. Let's hope he hires someone who will actually dig up original stories of the solid, checked variety.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on July 18, 2008 (boomark / email).