Mickey Kaus has a great piece looking at the interplay between the MSM and blogs. (click the link, scroll down past the political screedings to "model two isn't everything" and begin reading. Couple of key nuggets:
There's an implicit model underneath Alter's comments--blogs as the minor leagues, Off Off-Broadway, trying out storylines and scoops that may or may not make it to the Big Show. I have to admit I've embraced this model myself, as "Model Two." I think blogs are (for the moment***) particularly suited to functioning as a sort of intermediate tryout area for burgeoning scandals ("undernews").
Then Mickey goes on to take a bat to the process:
Exactly. Alter makes big bucks because he's called on to write about the story of the day at the precise moment it breaks out into the mainstream--and not a moment too soor! If the US bombs a Syrian nuclear reactor, the public wants to know about it right then--and Alter more or less has write about it or have a pretty damn good excuse why not. Newsweek's editors, in effect, can make Alter jump. He's very good at it. I'm not.
The problem with the "minor league" model of the blogosphere, is that it's simply an extension of this "just in time" model of journalism--blogs are a conveyor belt, if you will, delivering news. ideas and angles to the MSM on a precise production schedule.
But I didn't start a blog because I wanted to be yoked, no less than poor Alter, to the story of the moment--certainly not so I could be yoked more firmly but in a subordinate capacity. It's all well and good for blogs to be feeders of the MSM. But it's also desirable to have freedom from the MSM and from the imperative to cover what's hot now--or even the imperative to generate what's going to be hot tomorrow.
It really is a good view of the ongoing tension between blogs and more traditional media. I'm seeing this play out today in the way that many news organizations are increasingly reluctant to cite blogs as sources, even when they are clearly following.
For communications professionals, one key point here is that the ability to spot news ready to make the leap from the undernews to the main news is a huge asset. Of course, we have to be able to deal with the undernews (great term mickey!) on its own -- see it, respond to it, etc, but also prepare for when it breaks into the mainstream. You have to be able to do both, but the brand damage for most companies or individuals will be most acute when the news leaps to mainstream.
Hint: twitter and twitter monitoring tools are a great early warning system. The key of course is the ability to respond to these warnings pretty quickly --- communications quick twitch muscles come in very handy.