In the past a news story has had about 24 hours to break out and become important. If it didn't break out in that 24 hours, it died with no hope of recovery.
That was yesterday. Yesterday ended about two years ago when Josh Marshall (Talking points Memo) kept blogging on the dead-story of Trent Lott and his statement That America would be much better off today if Strom Thurmond had become President in 1948 on a segregationist ticket. Today, instead of being the Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is a back-bench Senator carping about what real Senators do. TPM kept an important story alive and forced the mainstream media to look at it again.
Blogs are the new appeals court for what is news. Read Jay Rosen for a good description of what blogs are doing to (and for) journalism.
In my opinion, one of the greatest failures of the modern American mainstream media is its total inability to pick up on news from outside the U.S. Blogs such as The EuroTrib will make that a lot more difficult for the American media to carry off.
ADDENDUM June 21, 2005
Here is another discussion of the power of the blogs in politics at BELTWAY BLOGROLL - The Power Of The Blog.
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