Bloggers vs the MSM

I stumbled upon this this morning. It begins:

In recent weeks, one member after another of the D.C. media establishment has gone out of his way to depict bloggers as hysterical, angry and destructive. To hear them tell it, bloggers sitting at their computers are akin to squalling brats in high-chairs chucking baby food at their sober, serious elders -- i.e., major figures at the established news organizations.

Not long ago, The Washington Post’s Jim Brady lamented “blog rage.” Joe Klein’s latest column complained about “vitriol” and “all the left-wing screeching.” Former Bill Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry recently told us that reporters are complaining they feel "intimidated" because “most of the blogosphere spends hours making them feel that way.” And a CBS opinion piece recently asked: "Does noise trump contemplation in the blogosphere?"

What’s all this really about? These skirmishes, obviously, are part of a much larger war between established opinion-makers and bloggers, in which the establishment figures continually profess themselves dismayed by the tone of the blogosphere. It’s a conflict that isn’t going away anytime soon. But guess what: This fight doesn’t really have anything to do with the “tone” of the blogosphere at all. Rather, it’s actually about the efforts of bloggers to establish the legitimacy of their medium, and about the reluctance of major news organizations and their employees to recognize that legitimacy.[emphasis added]

And then:

It’s often observed that the blogosphere constitutes a threat to big news orgs. But it’s not a threat only for the usual reasons mentioned -- competition for traffic, the speeding up of the news cycle, etc. Bloggers are also a threat because they're in the process of making the opinion-generating profession a purely meritocratic one. And that's the real reason, as I hope to show, that commentators like Joe Klein and self-appointed custodians of journalistic standards like Deborah Howell constantly carp about "tone."[emphasis added]

And here's the reason:

Now, all of a sudden, anyone can come along and, with little to no overhead, offer pretty much exactly the same thing. Aside from some obvious differences -- bloggers sometimes double as political activists, and the idiom is different in some ways -- the truth is that bloggers essentially offer exactly what Klein does: Words on a screen which are meant to help the reader interpret current affairs and politics. What’s more -- and here’s the real crux of the matter -- readers are choosing between the words on a screen offered by Klein and other commentators and the words on a screen offered by bloggers on the basis of one thing alone: The quality of the work.

And:

All of a sudden, there’s no longer a system in place that allows columnists to grow lazy, sloppy, or biased without facing consequences. Suddenly it's possible to pinpoint a commentator’s weak reasoning or inaccuracies and broadcast them far and wide.

I couldn't have put it better myself.