No doubt the PR agencies have a hand in launching many stories, but far more of their pitches fail than get picked up. I get anywhere from 50 to 100 pitches a day via E-mail (not to mention phone calls). I write maybe one or two stories a day. Sometimes the story begins with a pitch, sometimes not.

And when a story does arise from a PR pitch, there's no guarantee the agency will be pleased with the results. Reporters generally do talk to a range of sources and not all say things PR reps like.

No doubt there are a lot of rewritten press releases that get published as news. That's true of mainstream press sites and of blogs. Sometimes the press release says it all. And sometimes time or resource or editorial ambition constraints prevent a more substantive analysis.

Graham cites fashion stories as an example of the mainstream press's lack of initiative. Please. Is he expecting a Pulitzer from the fashion and lifestyle pages? Is that much worse than the gear-porn stories so common in the tech industry? (He should have condemned those who covered Enron...that's a case where the spin really did some damage.)

Sure, there's lots of feel-good or sensationalist fluff out there. But that's what people prefer to read. How else to explain the popularity of titles like People?

Every journalist dreams of getting a hold of a great story, but they're rare. Not everyone is approached by an inside source with nation-shaking revelations. And it's hard to find such people by cold-calling. Nor do most publications have the resources to fund a thorough investigation of a particular practice or industry. Be grateful we still see some from time to time.

Graham writes, "Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think."

Well, I think it's a stretch to condemn the entire mainstream press as inauthentic based on a few stories born of PR. I'd also venture to say that much of the writing I find online is suspect. Is someone's review of some book or CD on Amazon somehow more worthy of trust than one penned by a reviewer for the NY Times (who got the book for free from a PR agency)?

Graham talks about people writing what they think. Usually, their thoughts begin with a link to a story in the mainstream press.

The best bloggers are good reporters. If reporters happen to use facts that originated with a PR agency, that shouldn't be a problem as long as efforts are made to consider the reliability of the data.