The Boston bloggers

Forget the politicos, the real stars of this week's Democratic National Convention are turning out to be the bloggers, credentialed and otherwise, who are covering the event. In his story on the phenomenon, P-I reporter Wyatt Buchanan looks at the niche they're carving out in today's media landscape:

Most bloggers, unlike traditional media outlets, don't have the resources to research and publish in-depth investigative stories. And many bloggers rely on newspapers and magazines for their information.

At the same time, journalists are increasingly relying on bloggers to find experts and pundits and as new sources of information.

Wyatt also has a good quote from blogger Hugh Hewitt, pronouncing the death knell for the print media: "I don't know how you guys stay in the game except by analysis ... No matter what you do, it will not appear until tomorrow morning -- and whenever you stop writing, the world can change after that."

However, Associated Press reporter Anick Jesdanun is one of many mainstream journalists who's underwhelmed by the "experiment" in Boston.

Another is noted tech columnist John Dvorak, who decries the "vapid observations" of most convention bloggers -- and argues that they may be missing the point of their own medium:

... reporting live from an event is not necessarily what bloggers do best. What they do best is comb the Internet for overlooked information and obscure reports. Their patron saint should be IF Stone not Seymour Hersh.

Stone, a famous research journalist, did his best work plowing through papers and journals to find obscure information. The best bloggers do this on the Internet, not in the convention hall. The notion of making bloggers into homespun reporters is ludicrous.