Noonan's Blog Column

Shelly alerted me to Peggy Noonan's column about the blogosphere from last week, which i missed. In it she discusses the advantages political bloggers have over the MSM. Much of her column is stuff we've heard others say before, but i like this paragraph:

Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary. Breaking news can be one sentence long: 'Malkin gets Barney Frank earwitness report.' In newspapers you have to go to the editor, explain to him why the paper should have another piece on the Eason Jordan affair, spend a day reporting it, only to find that all that's new today is that reporter Michelle Malkin got an interview with Barney Frank. That's not enough to merit 10 inches of newspaper space, so the Times doesn't carry what the blogosphere had 24 hours ago. In the old days a lot of interesting information fell off the editing desk in this way. Now it doesn't. This is a public service.

i actually hadn't thought of that point, but it's obvious. Similarly, i suppose if i worked at a newspaper and wanted to publish a poll about robots fucking, the answer would probably be a no.