BY UNCORKING the sex gossip that fueled President Bill Clinton's impeachment, Matt Drudge demonstrated the unsuspected power of independent Internet correspondents.
Web loggers, or "bloggers," have been shaking up our politics and news media ever since. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, for instance, resigned as Senate Republican leader in 2002 after bloggers raised the roof when he made a racist remark in a speech carried on C-SPAN.
More recently, bloggers hastened Dan Rather's retirement as CBS news anchor by questioning the authenticity of documents he had relied on in a report critical of President Bush. Blogger agitation also led CNN News Chief Eason Jordan to resign last month for supposedly stating without evidence that U.S. troops had, in effect, executed journalists in Iraq.
There is no denying that the bloggers are a powerful force in the information world.
But at least for now, they are no substitute for mainstream journalism, despite its flaws. A great many bloggers are either too self-absorbed to focus on keeping the public informed or too skewed by ideology to put factual accuracy front and center.
First, to the "I Bloggers," who owe less to Watergate investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein than to the recently deceased Hunter S. Thompson. His "gonzo" journalism focused on the writer's precious idiosyncrasies, not on fact digging, and the Blogosphere, too, is a wilderness of self-absorption.
Case in point: "The Dawn Patrol," Manhattanite Dawn Eden's preening report on Dawn Eden, iconoclastic neoconservative "petite powerhouse," illustrated with Dawn Eden glamour photos.
Case in point: "Scottie and Me," anti-Bush blogger Russell Mokhiber's compendium of White House briefing excerpts in which he asks questions that reek of misplaced self-righteousness; to wit, has the press secretary considered quitting the Bush team on grounds of conscience?
Not every I Blogger is overtly exhibitionistic. James D. Guckert - on whom the president relied for blatantly pro-Bush news conference questions - hid behind the alias "Jeff Gannon" until left-leaning online scribes unmasked him recently as a one-time nude escort service model.
Many of the best journalists have impact because they expose serious abuses of power, as in Watergate, by painstakingly verifying their facts. But, perversely enough, bloggers' impact often derives from reckless impatience - a rush to shoot first and verify later, usually driven by ideological zeal.
