An homage to bloggers

Peggy Noonan weighs in on the Ra^thergate mess (and actually uses that term) and the bigger issue of "the fate" of the mainstream media. It's a fascinating, and I think spot on, take on what has been and continues to go on the field of information.

You can complain now, and your complaints can both register and have an impact on the story, as happened with bloggers and Rathergate. You can be a part of the story if you find and uncover new information. You can create the story, as bloggers did in the Trent Lott scandal. American journalism is no longer a castle, and you are no longer the serf who cannot breach its walls. The castle doors have been forced open. Other voices have access. Bloggers for instance don't just walk in and out, they have offices in the castle walls.

Is there a difference between the bloggers and the MSM journalists? Yes. But it is not that they are untrained eccentrics home in their pajamas. (Half the writers for the Sunday New York Times are eccentrics home in their pajamas.) It is that they are independent and allowed to think their own thoughts. It is that they have autonomy and can assign themselves stories, and determine on their own the length and placement of stories. And it is that they are by and large as individuals more interesting than most MSM reporters.

This is reality for me. I can complain now.

I still write letters to the editor of the Dallas Morning News, and they still don't bother to publish them. The difference now is that I publish them on my blog as well, and much more. I get to express my thoughts, what seems important to me, the inconsistencies and ironies I see in the media and in life. And you get to read my thoughts and perhaps take something useful away from them — a new way of looking at things perhaps, or a pointer to a story you never would have known about otherwise.

The world is a better place because of what Peggy calls the "cacophany" of information