otherwise he wouldn't be on the Jim Lehrer News Hour every Friday doing counter point with Mark Shields.

What the blogging community should take from the Kos Criticism is that blogging still isn't mainstream media.

Is blogging .... Important? (yes). Emerging? (yes). Influential? (In the Webb campaign Obviously YES). Mainstream? (NO). To that  conclusion I pose the questions:

If the talented bloggers consistently wrote Letter to the Editor (LTEs) ... across the board ... across the state of Virginia for the Webb Campaign ...from now until the November election ....  What effect would it have? (a huge one I think). Would that effect be more important than the 200 blog sites listed to the left? (I'm afraid so).  I'm also afraid that the talent which propels these sites wouldn't see the light of day (the editorial page of major newspapers) due to the monopolistic tendencies of traditional media (newspapers and TV).

So David Brooks is just "braying" about the obvious.... putting the bloggers "in their place" so to speak relative to the reality of major media which he so luckily is part of as an "Opinion Maker". Kinda shitty isn't it ... but true. What's really aggravating is that the sharper reporters are pimping here and there the ideas and attitudes emanating from the bloggo-sphere.

So what's a guy or gal to do? Blog On Bro ... Blog On ...

But if your a Webb Volunteer .... from now until November .... take your talent and apply it to an unrelenting Letter to the Editor campaign everywhere through out Virginia. With a  consistent approach a few shining LTEs should break through.

Blog on Bros!

He makes the opinion, and we are supposed to read it.  That's how it is supposed to work in his world.

If people were to learn to develop their own opinions without the guidance of the pundit class, then he would be irrelevant.  I suspect this is why he feels threatened.

This diary takes great exception to David Brooks' New York Times column calls Markos Moulitsas ZÃÂșniga ("Kos") of Daily Kos a "Keyboard Kingpin" and his readers "squadrons of rabid lambs."

Hundreds of other bloggers voice the same complaint.  Within hours, daily Kos had 690 critical comments and counting.

When 690 people flog to one blog to attack Brooks with like minds and with like-minded opinions only hours after Markos is attacked by Brooks, aren't they acting like a squadron -- or at least a herd -- of rabid sheep?

Or should they be known as a flock of vultures?  Or a pack of jackals?  Or, at least, a hoard of lemmings leaping into the sea?

I don't often agree with David Brooks, but the bloggers whom he called "rabid lambs" reacted just as he described...

that many, if not most, of them are tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic, and/or hilarious.  Let's not get away from the issue here: the right-wingers trying to damage the #1 Democratic blog (Daily Kos) and Mark Warner (through Jerome Armstrong). Also, the fact is that the "mainstream media" feels extremely threatened by the rise of blogs and the internet, is losing market share and prestige, and doesn't know what to do about it.  As for David Brooks, well, he's been a putz for a long time, and now he's proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I have no bone of contention with your premise about David Brooks.  All I pointed out is that he was able to predict the behavior of the bloggers response to his "herd of rabid sheep" comments before they even responded.  The 650 bloggers at daily Kos did act like a herd of something.

You are absolutely right about the right wingers.  They fear Mark Warner because he is a centrist.  If we can get a centrist like Warner through the Democratic nomination process, he can win states that other Democrats can't.  Unfortunately, many liberals and bloggers will push for a more liberal candidate who can win the nomination but not the presidency.

Nonetheless, Brooks was pointing out that the bloggers don't have the awesome power they think they do and they do have a pack mentality.

Here in Virginia, very few people would disagree that the pro-Webb bloggers developed a less-than-positive reputation for piling on and harshly criticizing anyone who dared to endorse Miller or raise a question about Webb.  Some of the bloggers on these pages, on NLS, and on other blogs have admitted as much and have apologized about being "over-the-top." 

Now, thank God, the bloggers are focusing on George Allen (after brief but caustic final shots at Miller, Miller supporters, and even the paid Webb campaign staff.)

Hopefully, the bloggers can repair their reputation as attack dogs and be taken seriously as they root out the core issues that will help defeate Allen in November.

So ignore David Brooks and he will go away.  Pay more attention to the self-inflicted damage that too often permeates the blogs and blunts our effectiveness.

with the homophobes, xenophobes, neocons, Coulter lovers, etc. at RedState, Free Republic, etc., etc.

There have been an increasing number of columnists writing furiously about the blogosphere lately, including Brooks, David Broder, Richard Cohen and Maureen Dowd.  Most of these columns have consisted of sweeping attacks based on very little evidence, even less balance and almost no sense. They mostly come across as old fogeys crabbing about some new phenomenon that they don't fully understand but very greatly fear.

Why?  Let's face it, there are few jobs as cozy as a pundit's.  They get lifetime appointments like Supreme Court Justices and often use up valuable space in a newspaper's Op-Ed section for 10-20 years repeating the same tired old opinions.  Before e-mail, they were challenged only by letter-writers, most of whose letters  never see print. For most of the punditocracy, "reporting" consists of reading the New York Times and Washington Post and maybe clicking on CNN.  What a life!

Ah, but there are renegades out there on the electronic frontier, who dare to presume that they too have opinions willing to be aired!  How dare they!  And how dare the Internet provide the technology to allow this calamitous cacophony of commentary! 

The last straw for these pampered pundits appears to have been the Yearly Kos convention, to which no less than 4 major presidential candidates showed up.  If David Brooks held a convention, who would attend?  That, my friends, is the problem.  Traditional columnists like Brooks simply feel threatened. 

It's sad to watch dinosaurs suddenly realize their own impending obsolescence.  But I think that this evolution in our democracy and our media will turn out to be a very good thing for the rest of us. 

"Old media" feels threatened by "new media," and they're lashing out.  Unfortunately for them, they're not going to win this one, no matter how loud they shriek.

ain't what she used to be when Ochs ran things. Judith Miller and the Iraq war-- sucking up to Bush repeatedly-- going as far back as their mistaken fawning all over Fidel Castro when he was in the mountains. Their judgment is faulty, their reporting increasingly trite, although they do have shining moments occasionally, even today. I think sometimes they pay too much attention to The Note of CNN and don't do enough original work anymore???

Of course they are threatened by the strange and uncontrollable new media. They have mostly themselves to blame.

Is it just me or does anyone else find the topic of MSM tantrums boring beyond words and receiving an inappropriate amount of attention? The print media complain about blogs, the blogs complain about the print media, and so on. This isn't just big picture vs. detail aversion because I have the utmost admiration for emptywheel - and many others - who are all about details.

Bob Johnson summed it up neatly in this diary: Daily Kos does NOT equal Markos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/25/85649/8359

So here's what the uninformed media thinks:

Markos says, "Jump!" and we all shout, "How high?"

Here's what happens in reality:

  Markos says, "I suggest that we jump," and about three thousand voices shout, "Fuck you!" and another three thousand voices shout, "Should we jump now or later?" and three thousand more voices shout, "Is jumping the right thing?  What about walking fast, instead?"  And so on.

So, note to the media: get off your dead asses and do some real reporting for a change.  Not only on this place, but also on the corrupt, greedy criminals currently in charge of our government.

Thanks.

P.S. As for the Dem insider consultants and groups who feel threatened by Daily Kos... Go ahead and keep pretending that this place is all about Markos.  That we're a monolith who follows his every order.  We like it that way.  At some point, you'll wonder, "Damn! What hit me?"

"note to the media: get off your dead asses and do some real reporting for a change.  Not only on this place, but also on the corrupt, greedy criminals currently in charge of our government."

And how about on Virginia politics, while you're at it. Try doing some REAL reporting instead of just uncritically reprinting the conventional wisdom, what everybody else is saying, or the latest campaign press release.

Goldberry turns it around in Welcome NY Times and Newsweek readers - informative, useful.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/25/91211/0933