Bloggorist Alert System

A Trend Perhaps

The MSM has been awakened from its deep slumber by a sharp stinging sensation in its backside, and they are just now swatting around to see what it is .

None other than the WSJ has this from Peggy Noonan. It is entitled The Blogs Must Be Crazy Or maybe the MSM is just suffering from freedom envy.

Business Week online has this commentary by Stephen Baker. It is entitled Don't Fear the Blog and the FuryDoes a blogosphere frenzy that helps bring down a CNN news exec for a comment he made mean free speech is in peril? Nope. It's exploding.

From the WashTimes a few days ago, this OpEd by Douglas MacKinnon. It is entitled Blogs sound death knell.

Hmmm. Look at those titles again.

Blogs-Crazy. Or how about, Fear-Blog. And lastly, Blogs-death. Now don't get the wrong idea. All of these pieces say good things about Blogs. I just think it is interesting how the MSM feels the need to equate blogs with some sort of dysfunction, or foreboding or even lethality to hook their readers into reading about the blogosphere.

Perhaps the MSM should form a consortium to set up some kind of color coded alert system like the DepHomelandSec does. Or perhaps a warning system like the one proposed for the Indian ocean basin in the wake of the recent Tsunami. It would work something like this; if Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, Instapundit, Little Green Footballs, and Captains Quarters all start riffing on the same meme, look out! RedAlert!! RedAlert!!

When it goes to all red, the "real-journalists" that make up the MSM could hike up their pants and run for the high ground while calling their lawyers. When they get there, they could safely begin spinning and dissembling.

Stammering "...What I really meant to say was..." or "...I remain convinced the documents are authentic..." while they watch the blog wave roil in all its digitial, cross-linked fury. Scrubbing the littoral monopoly of the MSM clean, devoid of the failed institutional structures known heretofore.

The Wrong Metaphor

I have blogged here before about blogswarms using the metaphor of the kicked hornets nest, and while that may be good at describing what happens to individual "journalists" (Rather) and other hangers on (Jordan). I believe the tsunami metaphor better at describing the fate of the MSM writ large.

Should the MSM be afraid of the blogosphere? Yes, by all means. Just as if Chertoff raised the terrorism threat level to red. Is that a good thing? Yes, just as all the articles linked above conclude. -SpinDaddy