...a CIA agent getting the price for being corrupt becomes "Plamegate"...

You really "get" the cake being the most laughable tool on the internets.

"a CIA agent getting the price for being corrupt"

One of the most despicable things ever said in comments here. At long last, sir, have you no decency?

Attention span. That and the want of stories with good pictures.

American Hawk, you forgot to mention blogs were COMPLETELY wrong about Plame. Rove had nothing to do with outing Plame. Armitage was the one who did it. Not ONE person was indicted for outing the desk clerk Plame because no crime was committed. Yet blogs continue to pretend they were right all along.

If the media pursued these stories when they weren't such as to be unavoidable, they wouldn't get invited to the cool parties. Also, it is hard to do real newsifying when everything is assumed to be off the record rather than the other way around.

There has never been a finding that Rove had nothing to do with Plamegate. That the craziest thing I have heard yet. Fizgerald found he didn't have sufficient evidence of a crime, but that is totally different. As for Armitage, the fact he leaked doesn't absolve any other leaker.

This must defend Bush at all costs is going to destroy the conservative movement - which is fine with me BTW.

Why? Because the lefty bloggers are viewing the picture in the right frame. The MSM is still only gradually catching on to the fact that it's not 1986 anymore, and the Bush Administration is pushing the limits of the law and of prior norms of acceptable conduct on every single front. But the lefty bloggers know this in their bones, so they're looking in the right places.

Attention span -- few reporters have the luxury of following a single story exclusively.

Bloggers can make good news aggregators, yanking together and focusing long-term events into a coherent whole.

Reporters rarely get the necessary expertise with a long-term story.

"American Hawk, you forgot to mention blogs were COMPLETELY wrong about Plame."

Yes, Al, he's forgotten more than you'll ever know. And that's saying something, because everything he knows could fit in your average toilet bowl.

Why do you nitwits spend so much time hanging around a schoolyard where the older kids laugh at you and call you names? You seem so incredibly proud of wasting space with your vast stupidity.

The blogosphere shows better news judgment because it can. The MSM is constrained by whatever is acceptable among them at any given time. And that is a matter of the MSM's collective consciousness. My theory for recent years is that the biggies (NYTimes, WPost,major TV networks et al.) went along with the war and all the mess accompanying it as a matter of business/survival. Fox News set the pace and everyone was afraid of being seen as "hating America." The powerful right-wing noise machine --for which Fox is a major megaphone -- is the key force.
We've passed a turning point in the past year, in the face of so much evidence of the machinations and failures of the Bush Administration, such that the MSM is emboldened to dig into matters it would have avoided not long ago. (They also, as the pols do, look at the polls.)But they're still afraid to come right out and say that 2 1/2 plus 2 1/2 equals 5. That's where the bloggers come in to do the math and connect the dots.
And of course this is forcing change on the MSM.

The despicable hawk points to an answer, or rather directly away from an answer, which is equally effective. "The Blogosphere" didn't display anything like better news judgement. A few good blogs did.

If you surveyed opinion and reporting on these issues across the blogosphere (right, left, middle, gamma) you'd probably find, on average, no more of a sensible nose for plamegate or the attorney firings than the "mainstream" folks had. But the blogosphere has a lot more people working in it than the MSM, and it doesn't have editors who and reporters who reflexively self-censor any notion that the Bush administration is essentially a criminal enterprise.

Bloggers see better because their lips aren't planted on Bush's butt.

The news media's(MSM) prmary responsibility is to look after the interests of their shareholders.

Let me repeat that; prmary responsibility is to look after the interests of their shareholders.

*Shareholders*

Not people of the United States.
Not Truth.
Not Accuracy.

Those things might be a distant third after reputation and/or brand.

Ah, Kevin.

I tremble for my country when any tin horn socialist like Kevin Drum can start up their own blog and attract the loyalty of hundrads of lefties. This country is lerching so far to the left its scary.

I agree with rea. AH is becoming increasingly disgusting. Not surprising for an idiot who resorts to spoofing when he doesn't get his way.

WM needs to consider carefully if they want AH, with his immoral wingnut agitprop and constant monitoring of RSS feeds, to define their brand.

Even given attention span and the expertise, the major daily print media have one gigantic Achilles heel: their approach to news in the broad sense is subject to editorial policy and to the (in my opinion, dubious) ability of editorial staff to see and follow real stories. The DC centered careerists who run the nationals don't want to rock the boat any more than the ladder climbers at the locals. Their inability to see stories under their faces derives directly from the publishers' sensitivity to anything that might impact reputations or create discomfort for their connections in government and industry. Don't want to create a sticky situation at the art museum gala, now, do we?

Reporters report only on the day's news, for some reason. They don't, or at least harldy ever, think it's their job to connect today with yesterday.

Take the Times's article today saying the firing of David Iglesias resulted from complaints about his handling of voter fraud allegations (not noted to have occurred in 2004-05). If one reflects on recent news, however, this story is open to question. There were two initial lists of attorneys to be fired, one in January, and one in September, 2006, and neither contained Iglesias's name. Only in October, 2006, about the time Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson were calling to press Iglesias to bring indictments against Democrats before the November election, and received no assurances they would be filed, did Iglesias's name go on the list.

Simple knowledge of the continuing facts of a case puts this story in entirely different perspective.

I think its a matter of economics.

MSM can sometimes,/i> afford to put their top investigative reporters on a single story for six months or a year and see what comes up. Those IRs have the time to develop the subject expertise and information resources to get to the truth.

But your typical reporter on a 24 hour news cycle can't do that. He/she has to take shortcuts, which often amount to accepting things at face favue until someone else comes along to dispute it.

Bloggers (particularly the ones you mentioned) are more like the investigative journalists in the first case -- although they develop the facts from reporting done by the news cycle reporters.

Bloggers have the time to develop the subject matter expertise and to accumulate, organize, and cross-reference the underlying reporting.

Sorry i screwed up, only one word should have been italicized.

I noticed this morning that Jay Carney went out of his way to credit TPM and Josh Marshall on This Week With George S. I thought that was classy of him...

"a CIA agent getting the price for being corrupt"
American Hawk

I believe this is libel per se in most states under the common law, and surely is in reckless disregard of the truth under First Amendment standards.

As some have referenced, there is clearly less symbiosis between Fortune 500 success and the Blogs.
With the exception of overly merchandised and ad-addled, such as Instapundit, it is not YET a problem.

What's depressing is that the areas is which the MSM pay attention to the blogosphere are apparently only those blog outlets that feed more grist into the mills of classical MSM yellow journalism obsessions: partisan and electoral politics, muckracking and scandal-mongering. It's mostly an extension of the Big Bore of Washington politics, and an excuse for ignoring 99.9% of what is really important in the world outside the beltway. Meanwhile, people writing about pressing global issues are ignored as before.

American Hawk: "It's very simple."

You put the square peg into the entrance to the round hole, and just start hammering. What could be easier?

egsmell: "I tremble for my country when any tin horn socialist like Kevin Drum can start up their own blog and attract the loyalty of hundrads of lefties. This country is lerching so far to the left its scary."

Which is why you spend all your free time here, "lerching" from post to post. Don't know what a "tinhorn socialist" is, unless by that you mean "mild-mannered centrist". Yeah, the US is really known in the world for its (note spelling) far-left policies. At least you admit you are scared. Or scarred. But, hey, therapy ain't free.

As usual, your grammar is only slightly better than reasoning—which is to say: both stink. Seeya, Lerch.

I disagree to the premise of the question, at least w/r/t the Libby trial. You can't get any more primary than reporting (in real time!) the actual, complete trial proceedings. The FDL team beat the MSM in both reporting what occured and in analysis of what it meant.

Which makes sense, Steve, because the MSM has made it clear, ever since the Clinton impeachment charade, that they were willing to, and needed to, be led by whoever had the biggest stick or carrot.

Who knew we'd miss anything about the Vietnam era? I wonder what Walter Cronkite says in private.

Also, on the Walter Reid story, Salon reported on the problems two years ago, but it took the WaPo getting its huevos into gear to get attention. Was the wheel not squeeky enough two years ago?

Kevin Drum >"...it was the MSM that did most of the primary reporting but the blogosphere that showed the better news judgment. Why?"

Does the name Benjamin Franklin ring any bells ?

Maybe you should remind yourself of his history.

"The future will be a struggle between huge competing systems of psychopathology." - J. G. Ballard

The 1st Amendment in action. You gotta love it!!

Hats off to all of you guys and gals.

Thanks.

Some blogs in limited circumstances may on occasion come up with something the mainstream press has overlooked. No doubt about it. Emails to individual staff reporters and letters to the editor serve a similar purpose. A telephone call and even snail mail can get the job done.

Some thoughts:

1. The individual who runs the blog often has his own agenda and he sees to it his blog reflects that agenda. Since virtually all posting is anonymous, the Big Boss himself can post behind a screen name in an effort to spin the discussion and even attempt to run off bloggers who fault the spin. To think that blogs are neutral islands in a sea of partisanship is foolish. I'd say it's quite the opposite.

2. The Big Boss who runs the blog may be a businessman who is simply after profit and who thus uses his blog for personal financial gain. Just like the mainstream folks.

3. The Big Boss who runs the blog may be out not only for financial gain from his blog but for personal influence and gain in the field covered by his blog, a seat at the table, so to speak, which he seeks the quick and dirty way.

You get the picture?

As for bloggers, the vast majority, it appears to me, are wasting their time. Wasting time, yes, and blogging for very personal reasons -- to feel oh, so special, it seems, when in fact they consistently reveal themselves as about as special as the contents of a honey wagon. And you've got to wonder about folks with time to spend blathering on day after day after day -- all behind a wall of anonymity. I, for one, have never been very enthusiastic about folks wearing masks telling all and sundry how to act and what to think and when and where. Folks who refuse to take responsibility for their output get short shrift in my book.

On the other hand, it might be a plus in some instances for an individual with certain knowledge to blog anonymously. This would be a whistleblower. Sadly, instances of whisleblowing are few and far between in the blogosphere though bloggers apparently enjoy the notion that whistleblowing is ever so widespread in the blogosphere. It is not.

No, sadly the blogosphere almost exclusively is the homeplace of folks who are NOT connected, who have nothing at all worthwhile to say but who relentlessly say it anyway. For instance, "Bloggers see better because their lips aren't planted on Bush's butt." Typical.

That said, I'll admit to having scanned the blogosphere the past several months to see for myself what all the noise is about. Sorry to say I've found the blogosphere a lot if sound and fury signifying nothing but indeed directed by the usual suspects quite obviously for their own personal benefit.

So, continue folks as you must, driven bv your own demons, your own little inadequacies or, in your words, whatever floats your boat.

And for those who own the blogs, my congratulations upon finding yet another way to fatten your bank account and tryst for a seat at the table which you certainly don't deserve but which you strive for anyway by the simple and time-worn tactic of attracting and fooling the gullible. You've provided us with the digital equivalent of the old-time tent show. Such progress . . . Personally, if I want to be entertained by pirates I'll tune in to the 50,000-watt border station that featured a guy late-night who offered a genuine, full-color, autographed photo of Jesus Christ for $1.99 postage paid.

Hedley - obviously there's a difference between a squeeky wheel when a Republican controlled Congress is doing its best to avoid any semblance of oversight and the same squeeky wheel when there's someone willing to listen and actually HOLD some hearings.

There may still be too many people in Congress willing to do "business as usual", but now that business includes at least some "oversight that should have been usual" (and only seems sensational because Congress did so little of it the last six years).

I suspect that blogs are more likely to call a spade a shovel, whereas the mission of mainstream news is constrained by owners, advertisers, and a certain reluctance to do anything but kowtow.

Yesterday CNN hardly mentioned demonstrations, if they bothered at all. I took them off my toolbar because they don't report news anymore.

...blogosphere that showed the better news judgment. Why?

Maybe it’s because Jay Carney is a complete moron, like so many other so-called journalist out there, showing that news is not news anymore unless it's Karl Rove claiming that Dem congress members are unpatriotic in some fashion.

Oh, I see, it's not news and unless it's meaningless hype.

“When this story first surfaced, I thought the Bush White House and Justice Department were guilty of poorly executed acts of crass political patronage.�

Well yeah, you think so Carney?

Gee golly, you think maybe Carney should have gone with his first instinct?

BUT NOPE, Carney doesn’t think Americans care much about “crass political patronage� when it practiced right out of the office of their states federal attorney's district, whom would being going only after a certain political party for purely political partisan reasons AND without the usually congressional approval/vote.

Imagine that not being a story?

Did Carney think that the ugly truth was so boring that Americans don’t care about the real world anymore only hyped up bs.

Yeah, Bush was about to start prosecuting Democratic congress members for whatever slight evidence or cooked up - cherry picked BS that the newly minted, partisan hack lawyers could dredge up, ALL while letting Repugs carouse with likes of Jack Abramoff unabated.

But Carney doesn't think that's news????

Why is spin consider news these days, like for instance, instead of the truth on very pages of Washington Post editorial section, we see the paper write untruths and clearly partisan lies about Valeria Plame's case.

That she was NOT covert,

AND,

that she recommended her husband for the trip to Niger.

Both those assertion have turned out to be nothing short of two complete lies – therefore, I ask can the public at large trust ANYTHING on the pages of a Washington Post editorial section? I mean, seeing as how the newspaper cares so very little for the actually truth and the actually facts? Those people at WP just make shit up about Plame case as if it's profound enough that they can type on a keyboard, not having to verfiy anything.

Was some reporter’s arm broken and their fingers so dysfunctional that knowbody at the WP could even call Ms. Plame and get the facts? The Washington Post lied, and yeah, I think that’s a big deal, and somehow they want a shield law for serving this administration and NOT the US public.

I say, let them eat their cake in prison if it's not consider contraband.

So the real WHY: Since today's reporters see nothing wrong with helpping Bush lie, I see no reason why they can't go jail for contempt of court (comtempt of the truth and contempt of the public.)

Yeah, the next time that man, Mr. Carney gets some gut instinct, I’d go with it BUT a word of caution: Real journalism requires hard work, and real evidence, you can’t just make shit up like they do over on the Washington Post editorial board.

I like to think that Chickenhawk has crawled back under his rock in shame, but it has no shame so it will always come back unless WM puts a stop to it.

I really do think this reflects 2 different political stances and an attempt of neutral elements to report and avoid upsetting either one:
1) The Right is characterized by a willingness to stoop to any level to win - any level of dishonesty or obsession on the irrelevant. This creates a lot of noise about the Democrats, but does a horribly job identifying real scandals.
2) The Left is characterized by a deep passion to win, but also a greater focus on the truly relevant and concerns about some degree of intellectual honesty. As a result, the Left gets exercised about lots of bad conduct on the parts of Republicans, but it also focuses on the real scandals with meat on their bones.

The Press feels obligated to balance these different viewpoints - but they are inundated with frivolous dishonest stories from the right and serious, honest stories from the left. Because they need to provide balance, they generally focus on the frivolous stories from both sides - that avoids questions of being unbalanced. Also, when you get a frivolous story wrong, no one freaks out. So, better to publish the frivolous BS story today than publish the serious honest one, if there is a risk it will turn out to be wrong. So, the press, concerned about appearing biased, has a bias against big stories now.

Good thing we have the grass-roots people-powered decentralized mainstream media, led by the Fox People's News Network, to defend us from those corrupt and authoritarian Big Boss bloggers. Ha ha ha.

sammy: "And for those who own the blogs, my congratulations upon finding yet another way to fatten your bank account..."

Talk about not knowing how things really work! Bet you didn't realize how you were just raking it in, eh, Kevin?

TomB and Kenji:

I have for sale today and today only a bridge in Brooklyn. You both seem like good prospects.

And, Kenji, you'll have to bring your mother along to sign the papers. O.K.?

This goes way back to I.F. Stone's Hidden History of the Korean War. In this book Stone uses the news reports published at the time to show how the published facts were totally overwhelmed by the bullshit storm.

The MSM themselves levelled the playing field. When they publish stories with unnamed sources, or no source at all other than their own editorial opinion inserted in the form of value-laden phrasing, they have no more credibility than anyone else, and you can simply choose who you want to read or believe for yourself.

This is why John Kennedy famously could 'read' the NYT in ten minutes- he knew what their editorial opinion was, and that none of their stories would have actual sources or facts, so simply looking at the headline and byline made him as well-informed as someone who actually read everything word-by-word and tried to make sense of it.

With the bloggers, this heaping dose of opinion is subject to instant fact-checking and criticism, something that almost never happens in the MSM.

There are a few good reporters in the media, but most of them stayed good by giving up dreams of a career in the bigtime, so we find them at smaller newspapers or, maybe, they have their own blogs!

At the bottom line, the MSM are a cross between clueless because they've always had too much money and shameless because they always want to have too much money. That combination might be appealing in a prostitute, but it dosn't make for good reporting.

sammy, you write ten grafs of arrogant nonsense and then mock people for taking you at your word? Don't worry; it won't happen again.

And hey, the "bridge for sale" thing is just a little stale, isn't it?

sammy, you write ten grafs of arrogant nonsense and then mock people for taking you at your word? Don't worry; it won't happen again.

Posted by: Kenji

Always nice when demigods weigh in with their assessment of blogger naiveté and mendacity, isn't it? Thanks for the Word, Sammy; now you can ascend from the earthly plane once again.

Where are these priests when people are dying due to mendacity? Like... today.

". . .it was the MSM that did most of the primary reporting but the blogosphere that showed the better news judgment. Why?"

Simple: Tim Russert bought that house on the Vineyard and that ain't cheap. Think he could afford courageous iconoclasm? Risking the ire of the establishment as the nation marched rightward, hubristic, over the cliff?

It's called conflict of interest.

It's not complicated, Kevin.

Why? Because MSM news is controlled by a small number of hyperpartisan right-wing Republican spokesmen. Most glaring cases in point ABC and Washington Post.

You have to wonder if they are really controlled as much as they think they are controlled.

If these news managers were suddenly to remember their roots and go all Lou Grant on their asses, what would the consequences truly be? Loss of short-term access to cocktail weenies versus (eventual) respect from the buying public.

These guys are running dying franchises, and instead of diversifying, they are entrenching with temporary power bases. (Think GM and the electric car.) But how many are true believers—in anything?

As bloggers, well ahead of the main stream media, let's stay ahead of this too--Bush's oedipal, pride-related escalation of the war started in February (although I think it may have begun sooner, those liars)--let's hold them to task in two months: We need to review the benchmark that General Gates said would be within " a few months--" see article below.
Kevin Drum had a post on Gates' statements about benchmarks back on Jan. 13th or so... many of us commented, and we're all charged with evaluating----was success evident with this crazy "surge"? Let's keep them to their "word." Time moves on, we are busy in our lives--let's stay on this.
So far, there has been death, destruction, bombings, civil war, strife, blood on the streets,
Iraqi citizens upset and leaving in exile, professionals kidnapped, pilgrims massacred,
an alarming lack of security and stablility...

Gates Ties Iraq Push to Drawdown
Successful Troop Boost Could Mean Withdrawal Starting by Year's End, He Says

By Josh White and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 13, 2007; A01
President Bush's new operation to secure Baghdad will begin in earnest with
a push by thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops in the first week of February,
and its chances of success should be evident within a few months, Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates told lawmakers yesterday.

The MSM does not get the judgement wrong. They see where the facts lead, but that story doesn't fit in with their agenda. So they do the bare minimum of coverage, try to spin things the administration's way, and hope you can't put two and two together. The number of scandals in the last six years, any one of which would have brought down a Democratic administration must already be in the hundreds. Now we get a new outrageous scandal, and folks are accusing them of using the fresh scandals to divert our attention from the last round of scandals.
And still it's only the unserious dirty hippies clamoring for impeachment.

Uh, Kevin? It's hard to see how reporting could get any more "primary" than fdl's liveblogging of the Libby trial, or than their legally expert reporting and analysis of trial motions, filings, documents and other related events.

TPM/Muckraker is admittedly more dependent on MSM, but does substantial "primary" reporting as well.

Simple. They are beholden to different, disparate constituents.

"...MSM can *sometimes*, afford to put their top investigative reporters on a single story for six months or a year and see what comes up. Those IRs have the time to develop the subject expertise and information resources to get to the truth..."

Posted by: bob on March 18, 2007 at 2:51 PM

Agreed. The MSM doesn't properly budget investigative reporting like they used to in the past. They've dropped the ball because the resources aren't committed to pay attention day-to-day. Operated by a few huge companies, they have become lazy, risk-averse, and less competitive. Blogs are not only filling that void, but are stealing that market from the MSM. Maybe mainstream media won't be resting on their laurels for too much longer.

Dang, all these blogs have made millions for their authors? Who knew? Thanks, bigtime sammy; your perspicuity is astonishing. Who could be the lucky devils that employ you?

It's great that citizen journalists are outperforming the millionaires at the top of our pundit class. The internet is mimicking the development of the penny press. Eventually printing became cheap enough so any one with an opinion or a grip could get a press and put out a sheet of paper to nail to a tree or the wall of a tavern. That helped commoners exposed to a variety of political opinion and ultimately they changed their governance. In the for-profit media, the goal is to fine younger, hipper consumers so news becomes entertainment, stories become USA Today style fluff, and coverage becomes worse because advertisers don't to read anything that conflicts with their thinking.

The MSM uses the blogs for the same reasons I do: to find the available info on any topic in an efficient manner. Sometimes they/I also find knowledge that is not readily available elsewhere. We can then cross reference it to sources we know are accurate as well as access the links that usually lead to the entire piece as it was written originally.

For some of our knowledge-impaired chicken hawks (& those of other persuasions) on here, I would add there are also conservative (& ultra liberal) blogs & other feeds on the net. I might suggest Bill Buckley or George Will, who use actual knowledge & thought in what they write. They have helped me to better understand the true conservative thinking on a given issue w/o the BS & much less spin. I may not always agree with them, but I respect their views because they know what they are talking about.

Great post, Kevin. Thanks.

Oh yes, it wasn't just US attorney scandal. Of course, there will be more to come. Gnaw your britches off spinning, wingnuts; your Dear Leader is going to be exposed.

Hey Sammy,

See Kevin blog.
See Kevin get rich,
Very very rich,
w/o ad revenue or a tip jar.

Pretty good trick, wouldn't you say? 3 times you hammered the point about they are in it for the money. I am sure these guys as a rule get 6 & 7 figure salaries like the big guys at the MSM. Yeah, right!

The article says, strangely, George W. Bush is a remarkable embodiment of the Republican coalition, with his Northeas
this is the nonsense that has been filtered to the masses since day one. People see through that now.
And the media continues to push that silly fairy tale?
Let's talk failed war, subsequent occupation, incompetence in innumerable areas, detainee abuse/suspect detention, corruption and government secrecy. Back in November 2006, more than 65 requests for made by Senator Leahy to the Justice Dept. or other agencies were rejected or side-stepped without response. Beautifully said, from Maureen Dowd:
"Despite all the talk back in the 2000 campaign about a "robustly experienced foreign policy dream team," it may have been destined that the Bush administration would be ASLEEP in the run-up to the insurgency, just as it was asleep in the run up to 9/11, to Katrina, to the occupation, and to the refugee crisis in Iraq..." Total incompetence, and scandal after scandal. And this silly story of Bush being ideal is still published? No one wants to have a beer with this man or go to his barbeque!
The horror of this presidency goes on and on, yet the main stream media yet portrays him to be a cool guy. It is so embarassing to see him act the fool overseas, talking about what he will be having for dinner, smirking like a goof, saying the insignicant. Please--bring on Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Either one--please, we need a new president.

quoth egbert: "I tremble for my country when any tin horn socialist like Kevin Drum can start up their own blog and attract the loyalty of hundrads [sic] of lefties.

Well then, my dear little chap, the answer is obvious: You, doughty egbert, need to launch a blog of your own to counter Kevin's collectivist poisons. If you've got a hair on your ass, if your concern for "your" country is anything more than talk, then you must devote every waking hour not required for feeding, clothing and sheltering you and your immediate family to creating your own blog and promulgating its good news. Why the hell are you wasting your time in the comments section here when with a few keystrokes you could launch a platform of your own to innoculate us against KD's socialist lies?

Get moving!

Posted by egbert: "I tremble for my country when any tin horn socialist like Kevin Drum can start up their (sic) own blog and attract the loyalty of hundrads of lefties. This country is lerching so far to the left its scary."

Time for you to get your own blog or go to your minion conservative web sites. You are not helping your cause by being here! Scoot, Libby.

Rand, you think egbert has a family? That's not even legal in his state. (The state of Confusion.)

Kevin-

Didn't you say awhile back that this would be W's years of scandal?

Any comment?

ELMO

Benen - FireDogLake's coverage of the Libby trial was must-read content for reporters covering the case.

The attorney who blogs for FDL did a credible job of explaining the legalese of Libby's trial.

But it's difficult to understand how, pre-trial, FDL became "must-read content" to more lucid cognoscenti since so much of the guesswork -- i.e., original content -- posted by Hamsher and her counterpart at The Last Hurrah was absolutely wrong. This includes their sometimes risible, often convoluted, usually conspiracy-ladened insistence that Woodward's source was anyone but Armitage.

On Plamegate, FDL's primary reporting was liveblogging the trial, which prevented any msm framing. Maybe there wouldn't have been any, but the record of the trial was clear from their work. Also, I can't help but believe that they were a resource to reporters working the story. There's no way you can say that Marcy Wheeler did not do any original journalism in writing her definitive book.

In Josh's case, I think here we have something that Pachachutec of FDL pointed out in commentary during the Libby trial. What happened in that case was that 8 US Attorneys were fired. None of those firings were national news. But the confluence of them was--there were dots to be connected. So the story of an individual firing may have run on page 6 of a local paper, but nobody would have noticed if Josh hadn't asked readers to write in with reports for fired US Attorneys. So while you can say that the original sources were probably local news stories, the recognition that they were related is investigative journalism at its finest. What Pach said is that the best of the blogosphere is good at this--at connecting a collection of independent stories into a coherent broader story. That's just what Woodward and Bernstein did. I don't see how that is not original journalism.

FireDogLake's coverage of the Libby trial was must-read content for reporters covering the case.

However, before that the coverage of CBS/Burkette by Powerline and Charles Johnson was also must-read material, for reporters covering the case.

As to Plamegate, the most praise goes to David Corn of The Nation: not MSM, but not the blogosphere either.

Praise for the blogosphere now because the blogs you read are mostly left-wing, and this was a success for the anti-Bush crowd. Deserved praise, for sure. But not the first time they made the MSM pay serious attention.

Because "real journalists" have trained themselves to be fair and balanced -- whether or not the situation on the ground warrants it.

They believe in covering scandals, but to take -- or even to respect -- the stance that the Bush administrations is characteristically rather than anomalously deceptive, well, that would make they conspiracy theorists or muckrakers, wouldn't it? So they're caught looking by TPM, which has a different take on the big picture.

Hence Jay Carney, who has the decency to admit that he was wrong. However, I expect this sort of thing will happen again, because the MSM is doctrinally incapable of realizing how systematically corrupt this administration is. It doesn't help that many of those in the MSM have been cheerleaders for so much of the past six years that they're protecting their own image and self-image as well.

I see the blogs as one element of a much broader power shift between pre-information age/service sector economic and post. The combination of the microcomputer for home use, the original establishment and eventual convergence of telecommunications technologies that we are in the final stages of now, the rise of the world wide web and the ability to access vast amounts of information for oneself (with the additional responsibilities to verify source reliability/credibility that much more important and alas not always followed) has made possible for the individual what only large concentrated groups/power could once do. This makes it a lot harder to hide things even in the massive haystacks of information that is out there and while doing that separating of the wheat from the chaff means you go down a lot of blind alleys/dead ends the good blogger knows how to turn around and start again until they either find the right path through or determine no such path exists to the best of their ability to tell.

The MSM is a product of the older power structure both in terms of operations and in terms of interests/control. As others have noted in much greater detail than myself they (reporters) must answer to budgets, bottom lines, and editorial/publisher parameters regardless of their own preferences. They are far more limited in what they can put their focus on and how much they can focus at any given time. Therefore they can be twisted into what we have seen today, de facto lackeys for the GOP and corporate interests above national/citizen ones. The blogs are a corrective feedback measure evolving because of the need. That is how I see the impact of the blogs and why I believe they will continue to have relevance and over time be integrated into a larger overall political process/conversation between governed and governing than we see today.

Blogs today though, especially in America truly are the equivalent of the penny presses and the pamphleteers that helped set America on her path towards independence. They represent the ability and actions of the common citizen to try and get what they see as the truth out there instead of just what is sanctioned by the powerful. That they tried to use that tool to create a sense of urgency to correct these injustices within their fellow citizens, enough do that the force for which could not be denied let alone ignored. The blogs represent the same today, with all the associated risks that go along with that position of those less honest/ethical abusing it for their own ends, be their financial or other. The ideologues that are only interested in their own gospel and those that accept it completely and other fringe mentalities. Yet also will be those like FireDogLake and Talking Points Memo who have done stellar work at a level comparable to if not surpassing that of the larger media including the best known in the newspaper business. There will be blogs like this one where there is informed debate and discourse and a sharing of resources and ideas. These are things that help the average citizen start to level the playing field between him/her and those with the power be they individuals or groups/corporate entities of some type. They are though only a stepping stone I believe more than a permanent major fixture, although what they represent will be. It will be interesting to see how things develop but at least for now the blogs help keep the larger media more honest at a time when they really need that reinforcement. They also allow for increased information sharing among the like minded, increased ability to organize and to network, also helping to increase the ability of the less powerful to organize like those with real power.

Scotian: They also allow for increased information sharing among the like minded, increased ability to organize and to network, also helping to increase the ability of the less powerful to organize like those with real power.

The blogs also facilitate debate among folks who are not like-minded, who are interested in sharing and testing ideas. I come here for the debates and contradictions, not for agreements. I think that might make me a troll, but I also click all (almost all) the links to other information sources that are provided. So I get information that I wouldn't otherwise get. It was some such clicking that led me to FireDogLake's coverage of the Libby trial, which was one of the high points of the blogosphere. I have mentioned at least three previous times that the way to understand the case against Libby, and the judgement against him, is to read the semi-transcripts without interruption, instead of reading piecemeal excerpts.

"the MSM did the primary reporting?

They did? Point out an example.

spider:

Oh agreed, I did not mean to sound like it was exclusively like minded folks, I was talking in terms of coalescing power from individuals, that's all.

Kevin,

You deserve a great deal of credit for the end of the Social Security dismantling by the GOP.

It's true TPM and others covered it but your insightful commentary and numerous graphs made the point much, much more compellingly. Kudos!

corporate ownership is the difference in news judgement

FDL were the go-to people for yellowgate for a long time. They are now what the NYT and WaPo used to be 30 years ago. Military-entertainment complex?

'They're old - we're young and that's life'

As for Josh well it looks like he'll soon have the head of Alberto Gonzales over the mantlepiece.
Congrats, major props and etc.
Go's to show what 99% perspiration and a little understated inspiration can achieve.
I like the metaphor of samizdats for blogs because they make benefit the glorious nation of Blogistan and throw all the inbeds and political hacks down the well. Power to the people back home.

Simple answers to simple questions:

Because bloggers aren't part of the corporate machine, which predominantly does the GOP's bidding.

"That combination might be appealing in a prostitute..."

Posted by: serial catowner on March 18, 2007 at 4:46 PM

Perhaps S.C. meant "That combination might make for success in career prostitution..."

BTW:

Blogs are to the MSM what Punk rock was to arena rock in the '70's.

It's true whether or not you're a fan of arena rock or punk rock.

"[I]t was the MSM that did most of the primary reporting but the blogosphere that showed the better news judgment."

The great thing about the NY Times and the Washington Post is that you never know on which page you may find a page one story.

Mainstream Corporate Media tends to be influenced by, uh, corporations--and corporations tend Republican? Too many reasons to mollycoddle the powers that be, any and all of them.

I think Josh will not want credit for a "head," but for digging into an important story which needed to be told to the American public. Something some journalists used to do regularly.