Omphaloskepsis

Wired is hyping up the power of bloggers in an article giving them credit for the ouster of Trent Lott. It seems to miss the point that mainstream news sources broke the story first, and it’s when they picked it up again that something actually happened. Sure, some key bloggers like instapundit kept it alive but I’m a bit dubious as to how important that was. Bloggers have a much, much tighter production schedule so maybe they just beat the mainstream news sources to the punch and the mainstream were going to run with it more once they had their facts straight. A bit harsh, but still some valid criticism: > “Bloggers are navel-gazers,” said Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California’s School of Journalism. “And they’re about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books.”

She added, “There’s an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting.”