Is the New York Times getting it?

In this article in the New York Times, Katharine Q. Seelye writes:

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, or so goes the old saw. For decades, the famous and the infamous alike largely followed this advice. Even when subjects of news stories felt they had been misunderstood or badly treated, they were unlikely to take on reporters or publishers, believing that the power of the press gave the press the final word.

The Internet, and especially the amplifying power of blogs, is changing that. Unhappy subjects discovered a decade ago that they could use their Web sites to correct the record or deconstruct articles to expose what they perceived as a journalist's bias or wrongheaded narration.

But now they are going a step further. Subjects of newspaper articles and news broadcasts now fight back with the same methods reporters use to generate articles and broadcasts - taping interviews, gathering e-mail exchanges, taking notes on phone conversations - and publish them on their own Web sites. This new weapon in the media wars is shifting the center of gravity in the way that news is gathered and presented, and it carries implications for the future of journalism. [Emphasis added]

This echoes my own somewhat snarky assessment, in this post:

Despite their whine about "competition," those quotes betray the true mindset of the MSM: they do not believe in competition. It is more an old-boys club that wants to achieve a power balance amongst themselves; and this newcomer called blogging is shifting the power paradigm.

No secret here, but we all know the MSM is overwhelmingly leftist. So while whining about competition, what they are really decrying is the diminishing of centralized control--like good little leftists. Yes, we still need the news media. I know I could not simply get on a plane and cover something like Hurricane Katrina.

But the MSM resistance is futile; bloggers will continue to grow in influence, if not in number. [Emphasis added]

I think that we are just seeing the beginning of the influence of bloggers. An old Quality Assurance saying goes like this: once is an exception, twice is a coincidence, but three times is a confirmation. The Dan Rather Memogate saga may have been dismissed by the MSM as an exception. Take your pick on the coincidence (Eason Jordan, Trent Lott, et al), but bloggers and their readers know we have already made it way past the confirmation point.

If the traditional media wants to remain profitable, regain lost readership/viewership and preserve their influence, they will need to embrace the blogosphere and learn to interact with blogs. Only then will they regain their credibility. The "pay no attention to that editor behind the reporter" approach is already long dead, and they MSM is only now noticing the smell.

The "never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel" may soon be replaced with "never pick a fight with someone who buys bandwidth by the terabyte."

UPDATE: This post by Michelle Malkin is a prime example of the type of pushback at which the blogosphere excels.

UPDATE2: I would like to extend a cordial welcome to readers of Lucianne.com. I was away for several hours, came back, and boom! My hit stats have gone through the roof. Thanks, Lucianne, for kindly putting a link to Impacted Wisdom Truth in today's Must Reads.

UPDATE3: Someone emailed me to explain that "terabyte" is not a strictly accurate term to use in describing bandwidth. That's OK. I think the point comes across. I wonder if ink is actually sold in barrels. And by the way, that email is a perfect example of why the Internet and the blogosphere are so valuable. I was quickly corrected on the matter, and though it is in this case a minor thing, imagine the impact this sort of correction has on the media at large.

Props: Lucianne