Bloggers go big-game hunting

[paineinthearse]

Feb. 20, 2005. 01:00 AM

Bloggers go big-game hunting

As Internet `journalists' bag another prize, Tim Harper considers the consequences for mainstream media

TIM HARPER

Often witty, sometimes racy, certainly irreverent, frequently sanctimonious, the blogosphere has been bulking up for years. But the mainstream media have long taken a largely dismissive approach to this world of online political journals: Open. Peek. Chuckle. Close.
No more. The growing army of American cyber-pundits hunched over their search engines has begun to wield strength that no one predicted.

The bloggers have brought down the powerful. They have unmasked an impostor in the White House briefing room. Perhaps most importantly, they have begun to shape a wide-open race for president in 2008. And they are in the vanguard of a movement that should give pause to everyone who works in what the bloggers refer to disparagingly as the MSM — mainstream media.

It invites the question: is everybody a journalist today? The blogosphere won a lot of attention during the U.S. presidential campaign when it broke the news that documents relating to President George W. Bush's National Guard service in the 1970s, aired by CBS News, may have been fake.

The traditional media jumped in after being alerted by bloggers and the story dealt a body blow to a venerable news organization, ultimately leading to next month's retirement of anchor Dan Rather and the departure of respected editor Mary Mapes. In recent weeks, the blogosphere struck again, outing an impostor right in the White House briefing room, a man who called himself Jeff Gannon, but whose real name is James D. Guckert.

more......