"It's striking how one obscure blog post can be more valuable than all the media speculation on this question (that I've seen) put together."
Perhaps this still qualifies as striking, but it's becoming rapidly more common, as mainstream journalism becomes ever more predictable and imitative, and individuals with expertise and actual insight, not working for news organizations, stand out as the only voices worth paying attention to.
Exactly. Blogging allows subject matter experts to easily, cheaply publish, be widely read, and compete for eyeballs with the MSM.
There's no way most people who just went to Journalism school can compete with, say, an experienced Constitutional lawyer like Greenwald or Lessig, or hacker like PG or Spolsky, or VC like Fred Wilson etc.
But there are some things MSM can still do - good professional journalists can still round up experts and put together a composite of their views. Or they do real investigative journalism that bloggers may not have the resources for, be it Bloomberg suing the Federal Reserve under FOIA [1], or sending reporters to hotspots for first-hand reporting.
Personally I think a combination of data journalism and investigative journalism (like WaPo's Top Secret America [2] and Bloomberg's FOIA lawsuit and reporting) are their best way forward. Both require resources most individual bloggers can't provide, and both are real news, real journalism.
I agree with all your points absolutely. The best reporting and photojournalism in the New York Times and other real newspapers is worthy of tremendous admiration; fortunately they still have the resources to put correspondents all over the world. My comment was not meant to suggest that we can dispense with the MSM, and I don't agree with the replies below that seem to advocate this.
Perhaps this still qualifies as striking, but it's becoming rapidly more common, as mainstream journalism becomes ever more predictable and imitative, and individuals with expertise and actual insight, not working for news organizations, stand out as the only voices worth paying attention to.