splash

Whilst bloggers cry victory over CBS and ready to crash the gates of the Old Media, Ben Wasserstein pulls up the drawbridge:

In the days that followed, newspapers and television programs moved the story along by cross-checking the memos against contemporaneous National Guard records, interviewing witnesses and family members, and again questioning the network's experts. The blogs picked up the story, but they couldn't carry it to the finish line alone. They were complemented by traditional media but never came close to supplanting it.

The bloggers who first cast doubt on the CBS memos deserve congratulations, gratitude and, of course, their time in the sun. This has been another moment of triumph for this dynamic and emerging field, and it will surely not be the last. But it has been a moment, not a revolution.

Aw, shucks.

Update: Cathy Young lobs down some boiling oil.