Eason Jordan Gone?

i'm amazed at the speed with which this under-the-radar scandal took him down. i'm not surprised that his resignation was announced on Friday afternoon, after the talk radio shows were over.

i would have expected Jordan to fight this longer. Big media has to be pissed as the number of news execs run out of town by the blogosphere continues to grow.

Expect future calls for legislative action to control blogs. Because, make no mistake, Jordan was kooky for years, but the story that did him in was completely ignored outside the blogosphere.

Mark at Decision '08 notes that in contrast to Rathergate,

This time it was the bloggers, and the bloggers alone, that pushed this man out. That will be heady stuff for some; it will scare the pants off of others...but what does it mean, really? Have we entered an era where our lives can be destroyed by a pack of wolves hacking at their keyboards with no oversight, no editors, and no accountability? Or does it mean that we've entered a brave new world where the MSM has become irrelevant?

Maybe not irrelevant, but more accountable, less hubristic. That can only be for the good.

It's ironic that an entire generation of journalists, who consider their greatest accomplishment to be the forced resignation of Richard Nixon, must now look over their own shoulders and fear a new generation of muckrakers.

Update: Jungle Book lovers, like myself, will enjoy this witty take-off by Vanderleun at American Digest. Excerpt:

Ye may post for yourselves, and your country, blog your cats if you must, and ye can;
But post not for pleasure of sacking unless you sack Eason Jordan!

Ha ha.