Critical Mass

I haven't really been following the Eason Jordan case particularly closely...mostly just catching brief glimpses while perusing blogs that cover his story in the midst of others. What actually caught my attention, however, was this:

And if you want to track the thing in real time, just do the Google News search. Of note: Google news is now pulling blog posts. The first cite that came up with my search: this post at PoliPundit.

Funny world, this blogosphere. Eason Jordan, welcome to the future.

Welcome to the future indeed. Google news is pulling blog posts...? It seems like only a few days ago that LGF and Michelle Malkin were posting copies of the letters they had received from Google News poo-pooing their requests for inclusion. While I couldn't find stories from either of their sites, I DID find entries from Power Line and Polipundit. Could blogs such as these...and stories such as the Eason Jordan spin-a-thon...serve as the foot in the door? Consider also the recent addition to the "My MSN" page allowing the display of RSS feeds - yes, even Microsoft the monopoly recognizes the value in offering access to the so-called "long tail" of blogs.

And as if all that weren't enough, Ask Jeeves has purchased Bloglines:

The acquisition stems from a widening interest in Web logs, or "blogs" - a term used to describe the online journals that have morphed from mundane personal diaries into increasingly influential hubs of news and commentary.

Redwood City-based Bloglines, formed in 2003, has established itself as an important player in the field with a searchable index of nearly 285 million articles posted on blogs.

Critical mass:

1. The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction at a constant level.
2. The amount of matter needed to generate sufficient gravitational force to halt the current expansion of the universe.
3. An amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur: “The sudden national uproar over drugs and drug abuse has reached politically critical mass in Washington” (Tom Morganthau).

Update:

Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine has this to say to the MSM:

And, by the way, you're no longer the gatekeeper.

: And this is about the death of off-the-record at any event citizens attend. The WEF is now trying to decide whether the event was or wasn't off the record. Doesn't matter anymore, folks; that's irrelevant. The citizens in the room haven't agreed to play by your rules the way journalists have. If they hear something, they'll repeat it. If Jordan had, in fact, said that journalists were targeted as journalists by soldiers -- which he didn't; just speaking in the hypothetical here -- then how can anyone expect the citizens, the citizen journalists, the bloggers in the room to remain silent? They shouldn't.

The off-the-record gate has also fallen.

Update 2:

This article from the Financial Times (hat tip to PDF) describes the power of a connected community's complaints:

It started with a simplegripe posted on a weblog - the blogger was unhappy that his new mobile phone did not work as advertised.

It was not long before other angry bloggers chimed in with their own stories, flooding the "blogosphere" with a stream of complaints that culminated last month in a class action lawsuit against the second-largest wireless network operator in the US.

The lawsuit against Verizon Wireless - and the way it came about - highlights the challenges that weblogs pose to corporations.

Update 3:

Winds of Change discusses the editorial review role of the blogosphere:

Blogs haven't removed editorial review from the news dissemination process, they've just distributed it to whole blogosphere and its critics. The marketplace of ideas is dynamic and Hugh is right - individual bloggers gain credibility (or not) based on how they approach stories like Easongagte.

Media
Blogosphere