Bloggers and Their 3-Piece Pajamas

It has come to full circle now. It wasn't more than 2 years ago when Mr. Klein, executive vice president of CBS, made the audacious claim that bloggers who broke the CBS memo story were nothing but a bunch of guys in jammies with no checks and balances on them.

A watershed media moment occurred Friday on Fox News Channel, when Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS News who oversaw "60 Minutes," debated Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard, on the documents CBS used to raise questions about George W. Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service.

Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."

Yet, failed to note that bloggers are exactly the needed "check and balances" against monopolizing MSM news dinosaurs.

He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries.

But looking back two years earlier in 2002 Reuters did a story about how bloggers are likely to resort to "barroom brawl" bloggings and that they must somehow be held accountable to their writings.

Perhaps most importantly, blogs require accountability of opinions, with each pundit putting his or her name behind every comment.

Hello? Accountability, Reuters? Remember this one? It was only a few months ago. I guess Reuters do need those "check and balances" out there.

But in a ironic turn of event the Reuters news agency is now recruiting bloggers via through Blogburst.

It is not surprising to see that more bloggers are getting paid to write nowadays seeing them as valuable sources of news and opinions, even if they're in their jammies at home typing away on their laptop. And good timing, too, since bloggers won't be held liable for defamation in California for linking to a story that does the actual defaming but then again the judge's ruling, in a way, says that bloggers aren't journalists.

Perhaps, things are turning around for well-to-do bloggers, even if one is deaf or hard of hearing, who like nothing better than to be a part of a bigger story because they, too, have valuable insight and perspective to offer. A least some of them are now getting paid to do their own blogging.


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