Critics of OWS seem to be obsessed with the notion that the movement needs to move on. “Okay,” they say, “You’ve made your point. It’s time to fold your tents and get organized politically.”

What these critics seem to want is traditional politics. Support candidates, run for office, vote. Something along these lines is certainly one way of being “political,” and the progressive movement is already ramping up to support candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

But one point that the Occupy movement has made is that the political system has become so dysfunctional that we need to broaden the definition of ‘political action.’ This has already happened. In two months OWS has shifted the nation’s debate away from the single issue of the deficit and, at least in part, refocused it on jobs and the reform and control of the financial system.

It would be a political act to hold marches and teach-ins the goal of which was to force the main stream media to expand its coverage of the influence of lobbying on legislation and the way in which our tax laws have been skewed to facilitate the flow of tax benefits upward to benefit the giant transnational corporations.

Critics of the OWS movement assume (or want us to assume) that the complaints of the occupiers are all personal, because so much of the messaging has taken the form of individual tales of hardship. Underlying all that (and some really amusing signs and slogans) is a very clear message:

This nation’s financial and political systems have become so dysfunctional that they no longer function to promote the general welfare.

So what is to be done? Certainly we should keep up the marches and General Assemblies; they are excellent tools for pointing out problems that need to be corrected and individual legislators do respond when their feet are being held to the fire of public anger.

We should support individual legislators at all levels of government, but we should be wary of being co-opted by any political party. The Obama administration would be enchanted to have the Occupiers leap upon the re-election bandwagon, but they tend to be more skeptical now than they were four years ago..rightly or wrongly. There’s still a year to go.

It is too soon after the resolution of the great debt crisis “compromise” to predict its consequences. It might after all turn out that money and jobs trickle down from the coffers of the protected banks, corporations and ultra rich.

Perhaps in the new America of fiscal responsibility the working class will be inspired to hitch up its collective britches and realize the American dream unhampered by the cost of compulsory of health insurance; unsnarled in safety nets; and freed of the cruel domination of labor unions. And all at the minimum wage.

In other words we might actually realize, and come to adore, the great conservative heaven

Of course there is always the chance that we will watch a process of slow decay as we produce a permanent under-class of the unemployed, and underemployed, whose lack of buying power eats away at small business, by denying those businesses customers.

Keith Olbermann has offered an excellent analysis of what the nation has been put through. He doesn’t think polite letters to  our congressmen are going to turn things around.

… the only response is to be organized and unified and hell-bent in return. We must find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960′s and early 1970′s and we must protest this deal and all the God damn deals to come, in the streets. We must arise, non-violently but insistently. General strikes, boycotts, protests, sit-ins, non-cooperation take-overs – but modern versions of that resistance, facilitated and amplified, by a weapon our predecessors did not have: the glory that is instantaneous communication.

Changes in the way we exchange information and a declining economy continue to hammer America’s newspapers. It’s these factors, and not a dislike for some one editorial position or another that explain the force reductions across the industry.

Regardless of attitudes towards the editorial policies of the daily press, the fact remains that professional news organizations staffed by professional journalists are our best, most reliable, source of major news stories. For all their alleged faults they are the only game in town.

(And what about network news programs? For the most part they seem to deliver information derived elsewhere. The exception of course are video photo-op ‘late-breaking’ stories of car crashes and fires. But the nature of the medium seems to preclude thoughtful, long-form features and backgrounders that we get in the print press.)

Bloggers would be hard pressed for the news they comment on if it weren’t for the stories developed by their professional brethren. But at the same time bloggers have held the professionals’ feet to the fire for not picking up on important, but ignored, stories.

As aggregators bloggers need stories to ‘aggregate.’ Nothing wrong with that. That function is important for bringing to the blogger’s special audience stories that might have otherwise been missed.

As news gatherers and investigators reporters have decided advantages over bloggers. In what follows I understand that there are always exceptions that prove the rule.

One of the greatest is that they are employed. Bloggers often have other jobs or full time obligations. If they don’t feel like writing, or haven’t the time, or are writing incompetently, there is no editor or publisher threatening unemployment. You can’t lay off someone who doesn’t work for you.

Reporters (providing there’s a benevolent nod from some assignment editor) have time to pursue an investigation or write a long-form feature. If they are short of ideas someone will surely ‘suggest’ that they get busy.

I believe that in journalism schools novice reporters are taught how to use all the public sources of information, and what they are…city agencies, public records like property reports, police reports, corporate records and so forth. There are lots of them. My guess is that bloggers are far from knowing them all.

Perhaps a reporter’s biggest advantage is what I think of as an “Implied Authority to Ask Questions.”  The reporter can call someone, identify himself or herself as from The Daily Blatt and at least expect to be listened to. (No answers to questions guaranteed, of course.)

If he tells the interviewed source that the conversation is “off the record” or “on background” that source has at least a reasonable expectation of the conditions being honored. But call up a possible source and say, “Hello, I’m Joe Bloggs could you comment on….” click.

For the coverage of local events bloggers may have some advantages over reporters. For the most part they write about material they already know and are interested in. They probably have sources they trust and who trust them; general assignment reporters, coming new to a topic, may may not.

Carolyn’s Community, and One Can a Week do an excellent job, as do our sports guys, Zoom Zoom Tucson, Comic Matters, Tucson Tails, and Views From Baja Arizona… to name only a few. (In my judgement Hugh Holub has provided the best coverage of the border in Southern Arizona.)

To round out the offerings we have enough cranky columnists and their annoyed commentators to satisfy just about any reader.

On a final note, we bloggers are expected to credit the material from which we quote. At least “A NY Times report says” and so on. The expectation doesn’t always go both ways. Sometimes we’re granted no more than “A local blog reports.” Oh? And which blog is that, and what news source is it published in? Attribution should be a two way street.