Whe the Today Show broke the story about Harriet Miers withdrawing her nomination this morning, they of course pulled in a resident "expert" news wonk, Howard Fineman of Newsweek. To be honest, I'm not familiar with Mr. Fineman or his work, and I'm sure he is a fine man. What caught my ear was that as he was discussing the withdrawal, he said, "As I said online yesterday, we strongly suspected this was coming...."
Wow! The blogdom is officially the info source of first resort. Mainstream journalists are now using blogs to demonstrate that they are first in line with the best info. It's not, "as I predicted yesterday," or "as I said yesterday," but "as I wrote online"! The blogdom ethos that we say how we really feel, what we really think, as we think or feel it, in our blogs, now seems to be part of the MSM. Even Newsweek -- a weekly rag -- is acknowledging that the first, best source of info is found in blogs. That just kinda blew my head off. Blogging is everywhere! It's legit! Amazing! I've got to stop using that damn exclamation point!!!
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Jay Rosen thinks that in a couple of years the TV News, instead of being vehicles to deliver us to advertisers will become vehicles to deliver us to the newschannel's websites and blogs where more detailed information will be available, coupled with links to sources, plus citizens' responses, i.e., dialogue.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's also kind of scary though. If the mainstream media continues picking up information from blogs, then we might have a major issue with credibility and information sharing. How quickly will misinformation spread then?
One of the allures if blogs, particularly "expert" blogs, is due to the fact that MSM has lost all credibility. In many ways the ethical standards are higher on blogs, at least on serious blogs, than in mainstream journalism. A newspaper does not have to provide a link to a credible source for every piece of information it publishes - big bloggers (actually all bloggers with journalistic ambitions) have to do that all the time.
coturnix, I just can't agree with you on that. I've seen rumors on the internet and on TV news that were NOT in the papers...later those rumors were unconfirmed. I think that newspapers still maintain the highest standards (as in higher than others, not "highest ever"). For example, I tracked down the meme that Harriet Miers said GWB was the smartest man she ever knew -- which was all over the blogs and the TV -- to an unconfirmed source from a conservative blog. That rumor -- while salicious -- never made it into our local paper.
On the other hand, just because you link to something doesn't mean that "support." To me, it's more often a form of telephone tag: look what they said; I'll repeat it here.
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