Notes on Rita

Hurricane Rita has weakened slightly but it's still steaming toward the southeast Texas coast and could be at least a Category 3 when it makes landfall. How bad could things get? Our sister paper, the Houston Chronicle, outlined that city's doomsday scenario earlier this year.

The Chronicle also offers an RSS feed for all of its Rita coverage.

Meanwhile, if you want to keep track of the latest developments, check out the Wall Street Journal's Storm News Tracker (freely accessible), which offers a blog-style running timeline.

Getting out of Iraq

With the fourth anniversary of 9/11 this Sunday and the continuing fallout from Hurricane Katrina, the spotlight has shifted from Iraq.

One person nudging it back is Slate "War Stories" columnist Fred Kaplan, who reality-checks three "widely discussed" proposals for how the United States could pull out of Iraq. They were written by Gen. Wesley Clark, military historian Andrew Krepinevich Jr. and Mideast expert Juan Cole.

The basic problem with such plans, as Kaplan puts it, is that "all of them evade a basic reality about Iraq these days—that the United States is no longer in control. President George W. Bush could follow the best of these plans, or devise a better one, and it wouldn't make much difference, because there's nothing to suggest that the Iraqis would go along."

A wartime media hoax

The Chicago Tribune tells the story of an astonishingly elaborate media hoax about a dead soldier who never existed and the young daughter he supposedly left behind. The most astonishing thing: many of those who helped the hoaxer pull it off -- including the amateur actors who pretended to be the girl and her father -- maintain they had no idea that they were involved in a hoax. They thought they were just playing parts in re-enactments for a documentary. (Has the "reality" TV culture undermined our credulity that much?)

The apparent target of the hoax was Michael Brenner, who broke "the story" while a student reporter at the Daily Egyptian, the campus newspaper at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. (The confessed hoaxer insists Brenner was in on it and doubts still linger.) The Egyptian has apologized to its readers ("We blew it.").

You can review the whole saga on its Web site.

(Via Romenesko.)

Get off the blogtrain

Bob Cauthorn is typically blunt, pointed and compellingly persuasive in this post to Rebuilding Media, his new Corante blog: Memo to mainstream media: You don't get to blog.

You have a publishing apparatus. So you don't get to blog. You have a broadcasting apparatus. So you don't get to blog.

In case you missed this the point while you were reading up on youth slang, I'll repeat it for emphasis. You. Do. Not. Get. To. Blog.

Not that you won't try. Currently, there's a rush among traditional media outlets to get into that wicked bitchin', snaps inducing “blogging thing.” Almost all of these efforts are agonizingly misguided. ...

Fact: Most major media players couldn't lose their audience faster if they were chasing them with a stick. And rather than reform and transform, major media - in some kind of manic pratfall - responds by further exposing the public to the very same cast of characters that the audience has already rejected. Staff blogs. Wow.

OK, I'll answer the obvious question: since I am writing a blog for a mainstream media organization, what do I think of Bob's comments? While I don't necessarily agree with his contention that anyone should be restricted from blogging as a matter of principle (let's face it, some of the more intriguing blogs are written by people whom everyone listens to).

Basically, however, I think he's right. Blogging can't be treated as just another publishing fad to be exploited and eventually, in a few years, forgotten. I'm convinced that it's developing into a distinct, different and quite possibly permanent part of the mediascape. Exactly where it's going, I don't pretend to know and I'm skeptical of predictions by anyone who claims to know. (Four years ago, did anyone predict the popularity of "baby blogs"?)

But, clueless publishers who try to jump on the bandwagon in a vain quest to be hip or relevant will likely fail because they'll miss the point. Blogging is all about showcasing new voices and telling stories in new ways (collaboratively, for example).

And I think that the mainstream media can -- and, more importantly, should -- blog. The tools, techniques and, yes, even the philosophy and attitude of blogging have a place in our toolbox. It all depends on how a given media outlet uses its blogs, what drives its blogging efforts and how those blogs evolve over time. You have to try something different from what you do in your primary medium. And you have to engage and involve the audience, opening up and taking part in a conversation that's at least two-way. The results needn't be as "important" as the standard news product but it should add extra dimensions and insights, or include other voices, or at least be entertaining.

You're all better qualified than me to judge how well SeattlePI.com's experiments in blogging have worked out, but I think we've done a credible job at all three. For example, Mike Thompson's Mariners blog is essentially a free-wheeling discussion space for his readers (they've contributed 90 times as many comments as he has posts). Reporter Todd Bishop's blog on all things Microsoft, on the other hand, is sort of a running DVD-style commentary for his regular coverage of the Redmond titan, including lots of "backstage" tidbits and insights that don't fit into the structure of a conventional news story. And over the past three weeks, "TV Gal" Melanie McFarland's blogging from the TV networks' summer press tour has given readers a pretty good idea of just why critics seem to consider it an ordeal akin to the Bataan death march.

For more of Bob's thoughts on the current state of the mainstream media -- and in case you're wondering whether he comes across the same in person as he does in "print" -- check out his recent lecture on "The Changing Rules of Journalism" at UC Berkeley (QuickTime).

Voices on London blasts

If you're dissatisfied with the mainstream news accounts of today's terrorist bombings in London, Michelle Nicolosi, one of our investigative reporters, passed along some "citizen journalism" links that are worth checking out:

• Flickr's citizen photo pool
• The instant Wikipedia entry on the event
• Eyewitness accounts solicited by The Guardian and BBC News

Formula for terror

An eye-opening story from the Christian Science Monitor: Is black-market baby formula financing terror?

In the nearly four years since 9/11, police have uncovered and dismantled a growing number of regional and national theft rings specializing in shoplifted infant formula, over-the-counter medicines, and personal-care products. At least eight of the major baby-formula cases have involved "fences" who are of Middle Eastern descent or who have ties to that region, according to a Monitor review of congressional testimony, news accounts, and a study by the National Retail Federation released Tuesday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has traced money from these infant-formula traffickers back to nations where terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hizbullah, are active, investigators say. Then, the trail usually goes cold. Once funds enter such countries, there's often no way to track them. ...

So far, most officials are unwilling to draw conclusive links between proceeds from shoplifted formula and terror financing, saying only that they're "likely" or "probable" in some cases.

Grokster talk

Analyses of the Supreme Court's ruling in the Grokster case are getting too plentiful to count. Here are a few that caught my attention:

Salon's Siva Vaidhyanathan describes the ruling as "a middle-ground decision about a territory that has no middle ground." In fact, it muddles the issue so much that even the Big G is theoretically vulnerable: "If anyone infringes, it's Google: The company caches millions of Web pages without permission (again, giving copyright holders the option of protesting). And soon it will offer millions of copyrighted books in electronic form without payment or permission. How would Google fare in a post-Grokster world? The publishing industry no doubt wonders. And it just might sue to find out."

Over at Slate, Tim Wu points out how the high court's decision reflects the justices' recent "Miss Manners" approach to jurisprudence: "be polite and ask nicely, and you'd be surprised what can be done. ... The P2P companies were loud scofflaws, foreigners, and college students who blatantly encouraged illegal acts. KaZaA's successor by contrast, Apple's iTunes, may ultimately pose a greater threat to the recording industry, but it operates in a respectable way. Steve Jobs is a rebel with manners. And that has made all the difference."

Copyright attorney William Patry opines that the justices punted on the key questions because, despite their "unanimous" ruling, they couldn't actually agree on what to do.

Former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen: "[K]nowing we were right legally really still isn't the same thing as being right in the real world. We had that euphoria with the first Napster decision. I hope my former colleagues remember that. ... The euphoria of this decision does not and should not change the need for the entertainment industry to push foward and embrace these new distribution systems."

Mike Godwin wrote a great -- and relatively concise -- summary with commentary for Reason: "What's certain is that in the near term it will be harder, given the superficial magnitude of its victory in MGM v. Grokster, for the content industries to ask for more legislation to protect them from those awful file-traders, who certainly include some high percentage of the folks reading this column. That's probably a good thing. It's also likely that the case itself, now remanded to a lower court for more factfinding, will result in further questions that appeals courts, including perhaps the Supreme Court, will need to answer."

Cringely's idea

There have been lots of comments about Robert X. Cringely's audacious theory that Apple Computer's decision to use Intel processors is just a prelude to an Apple-Intel merger that could seriously hurt Microsoft.

My personal favorite is Daring Fireball's very appropriate headline, Together We Can Rule the Galaxy. The analysis that comes after it is worth reading, too.

The New York Times' John Markoff also write a good story on What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance.

Apple-Intel explainers

A computer-science researcher friend of mine recently lamented the appalling ignorance and paranoia that have greeted the news that Apple Computer is switching to Intel processors for future Macintoshes.

Fortunately, the voices of sanity are now sounding off about what it means and why it probably won't be that big a deal for most people.

As Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter S. Mossberg writes in an explanatory column: "For all but the techiest techies, changing the processor in these machines will be a nonevent, sort of like changing the engine in next year's Lexus cars. As long as the new engine is at least as fast and smooth as its predecessor, few drivers would notice or care."

Elsewhere, Princeton professor Ed Felton effectively -- and succinctly -- quashes the notion that Intel's hardware-based digital rights management scheme is the true motivator. "Most likely, Apple is switching to Intel chips for the most basic reason: the Intel chips meet Apple’s basic needs better than IBM chips do," he declares.

And Macworld editor Jason Snell compiled a handy FAQ that addresses many questions about how the switch might affect end-users (it depends a lot on the software they use) and developers (for most, not as much as they might have feared).

Almost but not quite

In case you're wondering, the University of Illinois journalism professor who led a highly publicized four-year investigation to unmask Deep Throat as someone other than Mark Felt, had this to say, according to USA Today:

In 2003, students at the University of Illinois concluded after a four-year project that former White House counsel Fred Fielding was most likely Deep Throat, a conclusion Fielding denied. Bill Gaines, the professor who directed the study, said Tuesday that "we have to accept" that they were wrong "because [Bob] Woodward says so, and he's the only person who really knows."

If you're curious, Scripps Howard News Service compiled a list of some other people who've been famously "exposed" as the legendary Watergate informant.

Inspired by the end of 'My'

Based what Todd Bishop's hearing from readers, Microsoft's decision to banish "my" from the desktop may prove to be one of the least unpopular changes it's ever made to Windows.

It's also encouraging no small amount of witty commentary online:

• Airbag: "This is the sound of a million support calls about to happen. They are building a new campus in India just to handle all the traffic."
• Nathan Weinberg: "This means no more 'My Computer', 'My Documents', 'My Pictures', 'My Chicken', or 'My Severe Arthritic Thrombosis'. Microsoft started the whole 'My' trend with Windows 95, and has decided, ten years later, that 'My' is sooo played, with widespread use in websites such as My Yahoo, My eBay, MySwitzerland, and My Invasive and Embarrassing Surgery."
• Captain's Blog: "Yes, brilliant minds at Microsoft have decided to drop the 'My' prefix to certain desktop icons and folders, finally assuming that users are clever enough to realise that these things DO belong to them after all."
• appoulsen.dk: "But then, who’s [sic] is it? Microsoft’s? Everybody’s? Does this mean we can share? So many questions…"
• For more -- and more concise -- wisecracks, see the comments following this Neowin item.

A lot of the comments hint at more sinister motives, however:

• TechSmec: "What difference will this make? None whatsoever, unless it's the first part of a sneaky plan by Microsoft to take ownership of your files. Perhaps future versions of Windows will have folders called 'Bill's documents that he's loaning to you'?"
• HTMLfixIT: "The new folder naming conventions will indicate their new ownership, and 'My Computer' will become 'This Computer' and can be taken to mean Microsoft’s computer. Likewise 'Documents' can be taken to mean 'Microsoft Documents' due to their proprietary formats, in the case of Music and Videos, they can be taken to mean ownership by RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Hollywood respectively. This bring things in line with Microsoft’s thought that ownership won’t be as important as usage in the future. 'Too many people apparently got the mistaken idea that they owned the stuff stored in those folders simply because of the folder names. We had to do something to change that misconception without making too much of a public fuss about it.' said a possibly existing Microsoft employee."
• The Inquirer: "Of course there could be something more sinister to it. Pressure from the music business means that you can’t call those MP3 files ‘my music’, the various search engines seem a little too interested in storing your documents, and few people can say this is my computer these days. Maybe Vole [aka Microsoft] is simply reflecting the ephemeral nature of materiality. Or perhaps not."

REAL ID pitfalls

The controversial REAL ID Act, which sets new, nationwide standards for driver's licenses, is a done deal ... maybe. As the Associated Press and UPI report, the states are balking at the new requirements and may even challenge the law in court.

Here are some of the more interesting analyses I've seen on the law's impact and pitfalls:

News.com's Declan McCullough wrote a practical FAQ that explains just how the law will affect people: "Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service."

Meanwhile, security expert Bruce Schneier lists the many reasons why the REAL ID Act is a bad idea, starting with the observation that it creates a de facto national ID card. It also gives the states yet another unfunded mandate; creates "a major unnecessary security risk" by requiring street addresses for everyone, even those working in criminal justice; and makes the roads less safe by denying licenses to illegal aliens.

Another of his points, that REAL ID would simplify identity theft, is expanded on in an eWeek that explored the heightened risks that arise from creating "in effect, one nationwide database with personal information pertaining to all citizens."

Dipping deeper, ArsTechnica points out that an obscure clause in the act imperils the whole system of checks and balances on which our government is based.

Not so fast, Google

Is the Google Web Accelerator (GWA) beta the worst-designed, most ill-conceived piece of software ever unleashed on the Internet-using public? Sure looks like it, based on the blogstorm of criticism it has sparked.

37signals' Signal vs. Noise offers a very straightforward explanation of one of its key risks presented by GWA's pre-fetching of all content linked from the present page, so they'll load faster: "Google is essentially clicking every link on the page — including links like 'delete this' or 'cancel that.' And to make matters worse, Google ignores the Javascript confirmations. So, if you have a 'Are you sure you want to delete this?' Javascript confirmation behind that 'delete' link, Google ignores it and performs the action anyway."

It gets worse, according to Inside Google. GWA builds a centralized cache of pages that users load ... even if they're pages that only other people are supposed to see: "Google isn't serving web pages faster, its serving other people's versions of the web page faster. What does that mean? Try using Web Accelerator on a forum site, one with lots of geeks who love Google and probably already have Web Accelerator installed. Why, if you're lucky, you'll be logged in as someone else, as the folks at SomethingAwful.com discovered. The posters in that forum discovered that most of the times they refreshed the page, they were logged in as a different person, seeing their friend's control panel for the forums."

Google's response, recounted to eWeek, is that the most egregious verified problems are actually the fault of site operators, who aren't following Web standards. According to News.com, GWA "is deactivating the mechanism that caches vulnerable Web pages." Apparently, it never prefetched or cached pages from secure sites using the HTTPS protocol, such as online banks or Webmail clients.

John Battelle thinks that it's "a cool idea" to leverage Google's existing infrastructure and technology ... at least in theory (Tristan Louis expands on its technical merits). "However," he adds, "you do start to run all your web surfing habits over Google's servers, and that, of course, makes Google something of a proxy ISP, with access to all the aggregate data that an ISP like AOL or Comcast has on you. Is that a good thing? Well, yes and no. But ... it has implications down the road. Very soon, Google will know an awful lot about the world's surfing habits, well beyond search. Hmmm."

Al Kao is far less sanguine about GWA's shortcomings: "If you value your personal information and security, do NOT use Google Web Accelerator!" He has a good collection of links to key criticisms.

Even if GWA worked flawlessly as intended, however, its widespread adoption would still hold major repercussions for Web site operators. FantoMaster offers a good, if somewhat hysterical, run-down of the key points. One biggie: pre-fetching links in ads amounts to click fraud. The site also explains how to block GWA, with detailed instructions for servers running Apache.

(Incidentally, Google is no longer accepting GWA beta testers, InsideGoogle reports -- but the software still appears to be available for download.)

Your brain on e-mail

A new study has found that excessive day-to-day use of "always-on" communications technologies like e-mail and IM can be more distracting and and lower your IQ more than smoking marijuana.

Researchers from the University of London found that "an average worker's functioning IQ falls 10 points when distracted by ringing telephones and incoming e-mails ... more than double the four-point drop seen following studies on the impact of smoking marijuana."

Not only that, but checking in constantly is actually a form of addiction, they said, dubbing the condition "info-mania" -- and 62 percent of adults suffer from it. (See the complete press release PDF.)

Sounds alarming, doesn't it? Stowe Boyd, president of Corante and self-described "media subversive," argues that this is actually a good thing:

Continuous Partial Attention, which most think of as a disorder ... is a reasonable strategy for dealing with a sped-up world, but it requires shifting the measurement of productivity away from the individual -- like 'IQ' tests -- and looking at the productivity of connected groups. Time in today's world is yet another shared space: your time is truly not your own. We constantly monitor communications -- email, IMs, blogs -- to keep ourself situationally aware of what is going on around us.

The shift in focus is profound: you need to accept interrupts from others so that they can make progress on their activities, even though this decreases your personal productivity. But it increases the productivity of your contacts, and those dependent on their activities, and so on. It's a form of social altruism.

Incidentally, if you're wondering whether info-mania is any more addictive than marijuana, the San Francisco Chronicle consulted the experts to find out. Ryan Montana, a director at the Love Shack, a medicinal marijuana dispensary in San Francisco, put it in perspective thusly: "You can literally be spending hours a day checking e-mail. A person who is using prescription marijuana is not spending hours a day medicating."

In any event, Hewlett-Packard, which commissioned the study, offers a helpful guide on avoiding info-mania (PDF). The advice given is useful and practical -- e.g., write meaningful subject lines, set aside dedicated e-mail time each day -- although you've probably heard it all before. It also includes a concise, self-scored quiz to help you determine if you're an info-maniac.

Lotsa numbers, no answers

I've haven't actually read Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's "Freakonomics" but I've found the excerpts that have appeared online endlessly fascinating (for example, see this one on what real estate agents don't tell homesellers who hire them).

Salon's Andrew Leonard points out, however, that the manner in which they toss out nerve-wracking numbers and controversial claims borders on "willful irresponsibility":

... the policy implications of what the data tells Levitt do not appear to have been a priority for the authors. Maybe that would have bogged the book down, or strayed too far into politically treacherous waters. In any case, the authors do some nimble handstands to avoid coming to any conclusions at all. At both the beginning and the end, Levitt and Dubner trumpet the book's lack of a "unifying theme" and stress that their main hope is that readers, after finishing "Freakonomics," will be less accepting of "conventional wisdom" and more amenable to "thinking sensibly about how people behave in the real world." "Freakonomics" wanders from case study to case study, explicitly making as few connections between one insight and another as possible, and explicitly eschewing any whiff of morality. Morality, we are told, only "represents an ideal world." Economics, on the other hand, "represents the actual world."

Cookie Monster caves

OK, it's not exactly the most important story of the week but people sure have strong opinions about the news that Cookie Monster will cut back on his namesake treats.

Even the most vocal critics seem to agree that skyrocketing childhood obesity is a major problem -- they just don't think that changing a ravenous muppet's eating habits is part of the solution.

A sampling of the commentary from around the Web:

• Robert Paul Reyes @ Useless-Knowledge.com: "The "Cookie Monster" has been emasculated. The formerly fearsome monster is now a wimpy shill for healthy eating. His 'C is for cookie' song has been replaced with a new song -- 'A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food.' God, what is the world coming to? That's like Lil' Kim singing, 'I'm a sometimes slut.'"
• New York Post: "What next? Broccoli Monster? Can we expect Oscar crawling into a recycling bin? Bert and Ernie on the joys of civil unions?" (It's part of the intro to a very amusing Q&A with the big CM himself.)
• Scott Kurtz's PvP: "Somebody please put a gun to my head and pull the trigger." (Also check out his further commentary in comic strip form.)
• Scared Monkeys: "What is the name of all things scared to my youth has PBS done now? Surely there must be another way to explain to children about eating healthy other than destroying my childhood image of the Cookie Monster?"

• Patent Baristas: "What is wrong with America these days? Must we be soooooooo PC that even Sesame Street’s beloved blue furry Cookie Monster needs to be harnessed in and white-washed like so much else in our culture (or now lack thereof)? Yes, it is sad but true."
• Outside the Beltway: "Couldn't Hillary eat an apple while Cookie Monster ate chocolate chips and children given a choice as to which would be the better role model?"

• Musings of a Chick: "Armageddon is surely upon us for the very fabric of our culture has been sullied..."

Update: Perhaps inevitably, someone has launched an online petition calling for the powers-that-be to let Cookie Monster "continue chomping large amounts of cookies."

Britney ready for reality?

Some stories just invite commentary. Case in point: the news that premier pop tart Britney Spears will star in a reality show for UPN based on home videos she shot with hubby Kevin Federline during their courtship.

Here's a sampling of what they're saying:

• BayouBuzz: "is there anything about Spears that we do not already know?"
• Philadelphia Daily News: "We're calling it Must-Puke TV."
• AdRants: "The blissful innocuousness of MTV's The Newlyweds is about to get slapped upside the head by UPN ..."
• Noise Proves Nothing: "Dear Lord."
• Lost in Thought: "The horror, the horror..."
• The D-List: "think of it as Fat Actress, but instead called Fat Singer."
• hecklespray: "Wouldn’t it just be swell if we could all sell off our own fabricated holiday videos and then afterwards start calling yourself an executive producer?"
• Pink is The New Blog: "Woot!!! Words cannot even express what I'm feeling right now ... it's like a dream come true!"

Although the show is described as "a documentation of love," there are hints floating about that this is one "true" story that might not have a happy ending:

• New York Post: "Spears and husband Kevin Federline just might separate before their UPN reality show premiere next month, if their current behavior is any indication."
• Daily Mirror via Ireland Online: "Britney Spears drew up legal documents before her marriage last year to prevent husband Kevin Federline inheriting any of her fortune in case she dies before drawing up a will."

But, as E! Online points out, "one season may be plenty to satiate our curiosity."

Finally, it has had nothing (yet) to say about the show but The Official Britney Spears Pregnancy Watch is still good for a laugh.

The end of the world -- er, I mean, the show's debut is set for May. By the way, The Washington Post notes that not even the majority of TV viewers who ignore UPN will be spared: "One or more of the MTV cable networks will rerun each episode shortly after its UPN play and then rerun all of them again in a marathon."

Well, at least there's interest

Now that Prince Charles has postponed his wedding to Camilla because of Pope John Paul II's funeral, collectors are eagerly snapping up memorabilia that displayed the original, "wrong" date, CNN reports:

Sales had been slow after the wedding was announced in February, reflecting wide public apathy over the heir to the British throne's marriage to his longtime lover Camilla Parker Bowles.

But the decision to move back the wedding, originally due to take place on Friday April 8, by a day to allow Charles to pay his respects at the Vatican has transformed the market.

At a snap tea towels, china, aprons, mugs and coffee spoons embossed with the original date have become prized collectors' items.

Although quite understandable, this seems odd to me. After all, since the wedding date changed on such short notice, wouldn't the really rare collectible items be those that showed the correct date?

On the other hand, CNN previously reported that items commemorating the Prince of Wales' second marriage weren't particularly common to begin with, given public disinterest.

As The Times of London points out, the rescheduled wedding will leave "just enough time for the ceremony of blessing afterwards to be wrapped up before Britain settles down to watch the Grand National steeplechase" -- which the paper's People columnist calls "the really important event of the day."

Who's blogging Grokster

Here's a quick roundup of bloggers posting accounts of this morning's oral arguments before the Supreme Court in MGM v. Grokster, the landmark-in-the-making case on the legality of file-sharing networks:

• SCOTUSblog: "The Supreme Court put on public display Tuesday two conflicting reactions to the apparently widespread practice of downloading copyrighted songs and movies from the Internet."
• EFF's Deep Links: "Here, from the courthouse steps, is the first EFF dispatch. ..." (Followup analysis here)
• Timothy K. Armstrong: "I would say the argument went a little better for Grokster than I would have expected it to ..." (He points out that in its arguments, MGM and its allies conceded that ripping one's own CDs is legal, thereby preventing them from arguing otherwise in the future.)
• IPcentral: "The issues are tough, and the Justices amused themselves tossing curve balls at all the attorneys, not to mention sliders and a knuckler or two. ..."

Others are blogging about the broader issues raised by the Grokster case, rather than today's actual proceedings:

• Michelle Malkin: "P2P ain't just about trading your favorite tunes. It's also about sickos and smut purveyors who have unprecedented access to an unimaginable volume of child porn." (link added 1:20 p.m.)
• herestomwiththeweather: "Let us reframe the question and get at the real question here that the big content companies are trying to hide from us. The real question is 'Are talented musicians going to be allowed an audience or will mass advertising continue to drown them out?'" (link added 1:55 p.m.)
  

And, of course, here's the Slashdot thread. (link added 1:55 p.m.)

Boeing fallout continues

No surprise here but one of our most popular stories yesterday was Stonecipher's lover ID'd.

The story of former Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher's fall has clearly struck a chord. It touches on so many hot-button issues -- corporate ethics, gender relations and double standards, just for starters. Here are a couple more pieces examining the fallout, both for the company, the individuals involved and the society at large:

• P-I aerospace reporter James Wallace notes that curious readers have e-mailed, asking why Stonecipher was forced out while the woman he was involved with, vice president Debra Peabody, wasn't. He explains in a story today.
• Was Boeing's Punishment Too Harsh? is a USA Today story that tackles some other unanswered questions, particularly why Boeing's board pulled the trigger so abruptly. It gets into some highly speculative territory, however.
• In Zero Tolerance For Boeing CEO's Affair, Marketwatch's Kristen Gerencher looks at how this incident "may signal a shift away from employers and shareholders turning a blind eye to personal improprieties."
• The Baltimore Sun expands on that idea, looking at the pragmatic questions raised by illicit romance. For example, one expert posits that the deceit and disloyalty required to maintain an extramarital affair should be red flags about how an executive might behave on the job. The Sun also notes that businesses are coming up with new ways to cope with potential liability from workplace entanglements, including "love contracts."

• Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop opines "this was not about sex, or cheating on one's wife, or playing the old fool. It was about reckless endangerment of Boeing's good name, just as its reputation was emerging from the intensive-care unit. ... Let this be a message for America's business leaders: The world is not your harem."

Spam conviction overturned

In case you're a bit confused by the very terse Associated Press story about a judge dismissing one of the nation's first felony spamming convictions, Leesburg Today fills in some crucial details:

Jessica DeGroot was convicted of helping her brother, Jeremy Jaynes, sell fraudulent items via spam. A third co-defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was acquitted.

Virginia Attorney General’s Office prosecutors said that his sister used a credit card to buy domain names that were used to send the spam. She also received checks from her brother.

Horne said he exhaustively reviewed the cases and could not find evidence that pinned DeGroot to any crime.

Horne said this “novel” case included language that is new to judges, attorneys and juries. He praised the jury for being attentive and said in his 23 years on the bench he couldn’t recall one that performed better. The judge said that DeGroot’s case was entirely different from her brother’s and it might have been a mistake to try all three cases at the same time because of the confusion for the jury. DeGroot’s case “got lost” in the shuffle, Horne said.

DeGroot’s attorney, Thomas Mulrine, said that the only piece of evidence that prosecutors presented against his client was the credit card issued in her name. Mulrine said there is no proof that his client used the card to purchase domain names. The judge agreed.

Incidentally, the Loundoun (Va.) Times-Mirror notes that Horne also affirmed that any spam moving through America Online's servers in Dulles, Va., are subject to Virginia's anti-spam law. The paper notes that "may have important implications for [Loundoun County] courts, which now have the potential to be inundated with cases involving any spammer who targets AOL customers."

WSJ.com's future

The Wall Street Journal has succeeded in getting people to pay real money to read content online -- unquestionably a noteworthy achievement. But, is it also a recipe for disaster and irrelevance in the long term? Wired News' Adam Penenberg thinks so, even though he says its print cousin "may be the best paper period."

Why? Because for all practical purposes, the Journal doesn't exist online. Most of its content is invisible to Google, ignored by most bloggers and inaccessible to most people. All are consequences of its "walled garden" business model.

"As importantly," Penenberg writes, "the next generation of readers is growing up by accessing news over the internet, and one place they are not surfing to is WSJ.com. With their habits being formed now, there is little chance the Journal will become part of their lives, either now or in the future."

He argues that "the only way for it to ensure its long-term survival" is to open up its site and its archives to the public and abandon paid subscriptions altogether.

Regular readers have undoubtedly noticed that I link to Wall Street Journal stories quite a lot. You may also have noticed that I go out of my way to find versions that are accessible to people who aren't paid subscribers. It takes a bit of work but I think it's worth it because the content is really good.

A lot of other people, however, probably wouldn't go to that kind of trouble.

Who's watching the watchdogs?

Key questions are being raised about bloggers' emerging role as the watchdogs of the fourth estate following the resignation of Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, over controversial remarks he reportedly made in Davos about the deaths of journalists in Iraq.

The New York Times sums them up in Bloggers As News Media Trophy Hunters -- the online version's headline has since been changed to something less provocative -- noting that some influential bloggers openly question whether "taking down" mainstream journalists is the right direction to follow. (One of those quoted, Jeff Jarvis, takes exception to the Times story and its selective quotation of his writings.)

PressThink's Jay Rosen sees numerous lessons in the Jordan story, including this: "Bloggers, journalists, news executives and everyone else: For any of this--blogging, journalism, citizens media, a free press, transparency--to work, the solution when you mis-communicate has to be more communication, not ex-communication."

Rebecca Blood calls the whole affair a witch hunt -- but notes that mainstream journalists were "most culpable" by publicizing unverified accusations made by bloggers, thus making them more credible: "With the emergence of the blogosphere, speculation is a commodity. Traditional journalism's most important role remains the same: to report the facts, as best they are known, without being gamed by those who have an agenda."

The heightened animosity between bloggers and mainstream media ("MSM") has gotten a lot of attention in recent days. Lost Remote's Cory Bergman gives an anecdotal example of the real-world chilling effect that results: "Over the past few months, I've noticed that media execs who are not familiar with Lost Remote -- the very people we're trying to attract -- are becoming less inclined to trust us simply because we're a 'blog.' ... Now that we have a very respectable audience, we're battling a blog perception problem inside the industry. Very unfortunate."

On Social Security

Newseek's Allan Sloan offers a level-headed reality check on the Social Security debate:

Yes, I know that by now, you're loaded to the eyeballs with Social Security analyses. You've seen so many numbers your teeth hurt and your brain has reached statistical overload. Please bear with me. Based on my decade of deep-diving into Social Security's workings, I'll filter out the political junk, spare you all but the essential numbers and stick to economics.

News out of Nepal

I never paid much attention to Nepal before that day in June 2001 when the late Crown Prince Dipendra massacred most of the royal family before shooting himself, precipitating a succession crisis while he lingered in a coma, brain-dead yet technically the new king.

I've found news from Nepal quite compelling ever since.

Dipendra died shortly after the massacre and his uncle, Gyanendra, became king. It was hardly an auspicious way to ascend the throne, and Gyanendra's reign has not been a quiet one.

Today, he dismissed the government for the second time in two years, declaring a state of emergency and taking direct control of the country himself.

BBC News helpfully puts today's developments in perspective and recaps the astonishing events of 2001.

Mass ID theft

The secret list of ID theft victims is an MSNBC.com special report that delivers some stunning revelations:

MSNBC.com research and government reports suggest hundreds of thousands of American citizens are ... unknowingly lending their identity to illegal immigrants so they can work. And while several government agencies and private corporations sometimes know whose Social Security numbers are being ripped off, they won't notify the victims. That is, until they come after the victims for back taxes or unpaid loans owed by the imposter. ...

During 2002, the year with the most recent figures available, 9 million people paid taxes with mismatched names and Social Security Numbers. Some were women who had failed to notify the agency that their name changed after marriage. Some were the result of typographical errors.

But most -- between 50 and 80 percent depending on whom you talk to -- represent illegal immigrants using a stolen or manufactured Social Security number at the workplace. ...

The IRS also receives payments from mismatched names and numbers, and has access to the same no-match list created by Social Security. But according to IRS spokesman Anthony Burke, the agency doesn't check for number-name mismatches until it processes tax returns.  And it does not have a mechanism for informing the rightful Social Security number holder that someone else has filed a return using that number. ...

How can a consumer unravel the secret life of their Social Security number? In fact, since neither the government nor private industry is speaking out, there is no way. Asking the Social Security Administration or IRS won't help. ...

Telling the number's rightful holder that someone else is using it might create more panic then necessary, some Social Security investigators said -- and there's not a lot of good advice the agency could offer, anyway. There's little a victim could do at that point. Uncovering just who is the rightful owner of the Social Security number -- and who is the imposter -- could also pose a challenge. So would finding correct contact information for victims.

Tsunami scammer nabbed

The FBI's nationwide crackdown on tsunami relief scams is bearing fruit. An employed painter in Pittsburgh was arrested yesterday for a phishing scam trafficking on the reputation of Portland-based humanitarian group Mercy Corps, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

Matthew Schmieder admitted to the FBI that he sent out 800,000 e-mails purportedly from Mercy Corps to trick people into sending him money through a PayPal account. "Schmieder stated that he intended to use the money to fix his car and to pay some bills because 'everybody needs money,'" according to an FBI report.

The NBC News story on Schmieder's arrest at includes a good overview on the rapid proliferation of tsunami aid scams and offers tips on avoiding online charity scams.

In defense of myopic zeal

Not surprisingly, many folks are voicing their thoughts on the fallout of Memogate at CBS News. Four employees were fired after an independent review panel (PDF) found that "myopic zeal" led them and others at the network to rush an incendiary report to the air without proper verification.

Some of the most interesting -- and entertainingly written -- thoughts I've encountered come from the keyboard of Slate editor at large Jack Shafer. He has a journalism insider's contrarian take on the review panel's findings:

Investigative reporters are a different breed of human being, possessed of the absolute conviction that their wild hunches are provable. They're well-practiced at selectively quoting people and documents, overstating their case, and shamelessly revising their previous statements at a moment's notice if they believe it will serve their project. And that's no slam. Investigative reporters don't construct their stories from press handouts; they burrow into deep, dark, and dangerous terrain to uncover truths. If they weren't as resourceful at compromising reality, we'd have no investigative reporting at all.

For that reason, I found myself quarrelling with the reviewers—as opposed to their findings—as I paged through it. I rarely got the sense that the eight lawyers and one retired news executive (who spent three months and anywhere between $500,000 and $1 million on their review, based on my back-of-the-envelope estimates)—understand how investigative reporters do what they do.

Evidence of the reviewers' cluelessness comes when the panel assesses the CBS journalists for political bias and discovers none. I don't know that I've met more than four or five investigative journalists in my life who didn't wear their political biases on their flapping tongues. Almost to a one, they're suspicious (paranoid?) about corporate power, dubious about the intentions of governments, and convinced that at this very moment a secret meeting is being held somewhere in which a hateful conspiracy against the masses is being hatched. ...

The zealotry of the investigative reporter is more efficient than a Prius, more powerful than a plate tectonic shift, and as obnoxious as a 2-year-old. But investigative journalists, like 2-year-olds, require adult supervision, and the debacle that was the 60 Minutes Wednesday report indicates that the adults went on mental holiday that week.

About the tsunami

A few questions keep popping up in the ongoing coverage about the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami. Here's an attempt to clear them up:

• How reliable are the death toll estimates? It depends. As the New York Times explains, accurate death tolls are impossible for many reasons: census counts in rural and slum areas are often unreliable, existing records may have been destroyed, and some devastated areas lack functioning governments. Also, counting the dead may not a priority for responders on the ground, such as rescuers and relief workers.

  Plus, procedures for tallying the dead vary considerably across the region, the Associated Press notes. Indian bureaucrats meticulously photograph and catalog each body while Indonesian officials make guesstimates based on how many corpses fit into the average mass grave. Which brings us to the next question ...

• Do all those dead bodies really pose a health risk? No, the experts say. Poynter Online's Al Tomkins wrote a great overview on the topic. Slate addressed the issue, with decidedly more gruesome detail, back in 1999.

• Were there no measures in place to mitigate the tidal waves? There's been a lot of press about the need for a high-tech tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean but, as AP notes, some areas were spared because of very low-tech defenses set up against ocean-borne disasters.

• Was the devastation as total as it sounds? Apparently not everywhere, as this jarring photo of a busy nightclub on Phuket suggests.
  

Behind the headlines

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was taken aback during a visit to Kuwait when a U.S. soldier cornered him with what ABC News described as "an unusually blunt question" about the lack of armored vehicles in Iraq.

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, of Nashville, drew applause with his televised, show-stopping query: "Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Wilson's outspokenness didn't surprise those who knew him -- but, apparently, he didn't come up with the question himself.

Chattanooga Times Free Press military reporter Lee Pitts, who's embedded with Wilson's unit, wrote in e-mail to colleagues (it's archived at Romenesko) that he primed the soldiers escorting him to ask tough questions. Pitts said he also arranged with the sergeant in charge of the microphone during Rumsfeld's Q&A session (transcript) to pick them out of the crowd.

Not that Wilson seemed to mind. "The solider who asked the question said he felt good b/c he took his complaints to the top," Pitts wrote. "When he got back to his unit most of the guys patted him on the back but a few of the officers were upset b/c they thought it would make them look bad."

Don't blame the bloggers

Looks like the backlash against the backlash against bloggers over leaked, erroneous exit poll data is gearing up. Today, WSJ.com columnists Jason Fry and Tim Hanrahan point out that blaming "irresponsible" bloggers for posting misleading data misses the point:

In trying to diagnose what went awry on Election Day, many of bloggers' critics seemed to be saying the Internet was at it again, and this time that creepy cesspool of comic-book geeks and pornographers was spitting out bad election data. ...

What's changed is that once you had to be a media or political person of a certain minimum altitude to be let in on the secret; now, all you need is a Net connection and rudimentary typing skills. Those who used to have the clubhouse all to themselves have found the door wide open to anyone and everyone. And some of them don't like it.

Which, come to think of it, really is so 1997: Information formerly reserved for a cadre of insiders now spreads more quickly than those insiders can control it. In other words, the middlemen have been eliminated. (If you spent 100 large at business school, you call that "disintermediaton.") Just took a bit longer to hit the Election Day carnival, that's all.

Hooray for lawyers

Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick notes that we have the jurists to thank for having an election that "was decided by the voters, not the courts, a result that's far better for all of us in the long run":

The real reason Ohio didn't become Florida isn't just that Kerry lost the popular vote, unlike Gore four years ago, or that the margins were too close to beat. The reason was that much maligned lawyers all around the country did their jobs. There's a reason we all talk trash about ambulance chasers, yet would never dream of buying a house, or writing a will, without an attorney: Lawyers are troubleshooters and problem-solvers, sherpas through ambiguous terrain. This election they did precisely what they were meant to do: learned from the last time, monitored the rough patches, interceded in the close cases, and backed off when it became irrelevant. The law, at its best, anticipates trouble and builds systems to protect against it. That is what John Kerry recognized this morning, and we are all better off for it.

Election Day, by blog

Just in case you weren't monitoring the election via the blogosphere yesterday, the Hartford Courant dishes up an entertaining summary of the highlights.

Although the major broadcast and cable news networks all played it very, very safe when it came to projecting winners based on exit polls, some bloggers didn't feel the need to be so restrained. The Wall Street Journal examines how they influenced mainstream media coverage and moved the stock market -- and what it means for the future.

Update: Meanwhile, over at MSNBC.com's Bloggers Cafe, Matt Stoller delivers a pithy reality check for all the growing power of bloggers: "I'm finding is that there is very little difference between anything on the blogs and anything elsewhere.  The blogs are not a separate world anymore, but a part of America that watches the media and creates its own conventional wisdom, which is sometimes reflective of reality and often not.  Not so different from Washington, DC, actually."

Lost Remote's Cory Bergman also downplays the power of blogs, but for a different reason: "I think today's media consumers are media savvy. If they're smart enough to incorporate blogs into their daily diet, they understand that CNN.com or KING5.com carry substantially more editorial weight -- especially on the biggest stories."

(First two links via Romenesko.)

On October surprises

With a little more than one day left in the month, it's getting pretty late for anyone to pull off an October surprise that could swing the election. What exactly is an October surprise? Slate's Andy Bowers explains all (the term has been around longer than you might think).

In another Slate piece, chief political correspondent William Saletan offers an interesting analysis on how Osama bin Laden's latest message -- while not exactly the October surprise that had long been rumored -- might well ensure President Bush's re-election: "Bin Laden would like to see Bush thrown out of office. ... More likely, by showing up four days before our election, he'll scare Americans into re-electing Bush."

Bush site goes U.S.-only

BBC News reports that GeorgeWBush.com, the official Web site of the president's re-election campaign, is blocking visitors from outside the United States: "The blocking does not appear to be due to an attack by vandals or malicious hackers, but as a result of a policy decision by the Bush camp."

No official explanation has been offered.

On Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin is logging some interesting reader feedback on which countries are excluded, theories on how it's done, and various workarounds and mirror sites.

Flu shot frenzy

When flu-shot tourism to Canada takes off, you know something's up. But is the concern about scarce flu shots overblown?

For many people, the answer is "probably," according to sanity checks that have been coming out from various news organizations the past couple of days.

"I call it the Beanie Baby effect," Gregory A. Poland, director of vaccine research at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, tells The Wall Street Journal's Tara Parker-Pope. "It's a scarcity mentality. People perceive that it's not available, and now they want it."

Cutting through the hype, Parker-Pope notes:

The truth is that the push over the years for flu shots has never been about a personal risk for healthy individuals. In a given year, about 80 percent of people who don't get flu shots never get the flu anyway. Among healthy people who are exposed to flu, many will have only mild symptoms.

Instead, the call for healthy people to get the shots has much more to do with broad public-health concerns -- the greater the number of people who get shots, the less likely they are to spread flu to someone particularly vulnerable. In addition, employers have pushed flu shots among healthy workers because they want as few people as possible to miss work. Worker absence due to flu costs employers as much as $12 billion a year in lost wages and other costs.

A story from the Associated Press sounds a similar note, pointing out that the vaccine may only work 52 percent of the time anyway.

More about the Bulge

The mysterious Bush Bulge is proving to be one of those stories that just won't die. Today, Slate chimes in with a concise yet "comprehensive guide to the best theories, photos, video clips, denials, and testimony—expert and otherwise—available on the Web." As a bonus, writer Louisa Herron Thomas recaps the seldom-told tale of how the bulge first came to light.

U2 iPod details

Forbes has the scoop on the yet-to-be-announced but already eagerly anticipated U2 special-edition iPod.

The basics: it'll be black and come preloaded with a number of U2 songs, including the band's new album, "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb."

Another 'bulge' theory

J.D. Lasica rounds up some links that put forth an intriguing theory: the mysterious bulge beneath President Bush's jacket could be a Lifecor LifeVest, a specialized portable defibrillator.

Podcast potpourri

Podcasting's in the news today. If you're not familiar with the term, it's a way of using RSS feeds to distribute prerecorded audio files, specifically meant to be downloaded and played back on an iPod or similar device. (Dave Winer offers a simple explanation; Dave Slusher, a more technical one.)

News.com cites podcasting as one example of how audio publishing is evolving in a wide-ranging article on how radio is adapting to 21st century technology.

Meanwhile, Wired News offers a great survey of the state of the medium, pointing out the potential it holds for commercial broadcasters to reach new audiences via timeshifting and spaceshifting.

For example, the Post-Intelligencer's broadcast partner, KOMO-AM/1000, is now podcasting its radio news stories. (Here's the direct link to the podcast RSS feed.)

Draft rumors

Rumors are suddenly swirling that the United States will soon reinstitute a military draft. There's no truth to it at all, official sources assure Charles Pope, our man in D.C., but that hasn't kept it from evolving into what he calls "the latest urban myth":

It is spawned by a loose collection of facts, propelled by the Internet and a war that has divided the nation. With students back on campuses, it also has been given wide attention in college newspapers, which in some cases have perpetuated the myth.

Debunking this particular myth has, in fact, become a popular story idea in the media the past couple of weeks. Here are some examples:

• Newsweek's The Draft: Rumors, and That's All They Are points some fingers at some prominent names, including Howard Dean, who seem to be fueling the rumor mill.


• Some see new draft rumors as a political ploy is a nicely histrionic-free Pioneer Press piece that just outlines the facts and numbers.
  
• Draft rumors persist in face of a military stretched thin, an opinion column from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, doesn't exactly debunk the myth but makes some good points in trying to explain why so many people give it credence.


• Pentagon dismisses draft rumors (NBC Nighty News)


• Draft rumors whip up election firestorm: GOP fumes as Dems fan flames of renewal fears (Rocky Mountain News)


• Draft rumors abound on Web (News & Observer)


• Rumors of draft persist despite denials, failed bills (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Truth is in the type?

Dan Gillmor linked to an in-depth Bush memo font study, conducted by a professor at Utah State University, which makes a convincing case that they really were written on a typewriter. Investigator David E. Hailey Jr. concludes that "there is nothing physical in the memos implying they are not authentic," but points out that this is an entirely separate question from whether they are, in fact, forgeries:

There is no good way for proving the documents in question are authentic. If I were in the Texas Air National Guard, and I said, “I saw the documents in Col. Killian’s cabinet,” who would believe me? The answer to that question depends entirely on the political point of view of my audience. It is possible however to infer from physical evidence that CBS (and Mr. Rather and his producers) justifiably believed the documents to be authentic. Given enough time and concentration, any competent “expert” would have concluded that they are typed in a font commonly used in the military at the time. There is currently outside evidence indicating that the documents are inauthentic, but none of it exists in the mechanics of documents themselves. They are completely in keeping with typewritten documents of the period in question – early 1970s. Whatever the outcome of this kafuffle, I am convinced that in the end, it will be generally recognized that the documents CBS released to the public were typed – probably on an old, military typewriter.

On the Bush memos

The big story today: CBS News has apologized for airing a story about President Bush's Air National Guard service based on some now discredited memos. The network no longer vouches for their authenticity and says it was misled by the source who provided them.

Some of the more interesting links I've found on the subject:

• In an interview with CBS News anchor Dan Rather, the former National Guard commander who supplied the memos admits that he lied about how he had obtained them but insists he did not forge them. He concedes that he can't verify their authenticity, either, however.


• CBS News says it will form an independent panel to investigate what happened; the Poynter Institute's Jill Geisler gets the details straight from its top exec. Meanwhile, the Washington Post already published its own reconstruction of the road to disaster: "An examination of the process that led to the broadcast, based on interviews with the participants and more than 20 independent analysts, shows that CBS rushed the story onto the air while ignoring the advice of its own outside experts, and used as corroborating witnesses people who had no firsthand knowledge of the documents."


• What happens next? Jay Rosen at PressThink offers some pretty good educated guesses, plus a couple of suggestions. He also notes that the strangest thing about this whole controversy, to him, was how long CBS kept its head in the sand: "Any bright CBS intern who understood the Net, read the blogs and followed the press could have read the danger signs accumulating day-by-day. But CBS made statements and took actions that showed a reading comprehension score of almost zero."


• One important question which has -- oddly, in my opinion -- become rather tangential is whether what Bush did (or didn't do) during the Vietnam War really matters to voters in 2004. Last Tuesday, we asked SeattlePI.com whether they really cared about what Bush and John Kerry did during the war in a poll on our home page. The results, although unscientific, suggest that quite a few people don't. Commentator William F. Buckley wrote an interesting piece articulating why questions about Bush's wartime service are much ado about nothing.

Charlie Brown, savior

Seattle Weekly has a great story on how good ol' Charlie Brown proved the savior of specialty-comics publisher Fantagraphics. Long flirting with bankruptcy, it's now well in the black because of an ambitious 12-year project to publish every "Peanuts" strip in book form.

Writer Michaelangelo Matos details the company's history, set against the context of overall changes in the comic-book industry over the past quarter-century, and explores just how it landed the remarkable "Peanuts" deal:

What continues to guide Fantagraphics—what made the Schulz family trust them enough to do Peanuts justice—is the overwhelming sense of mission that emanates from everything they issue. [Company heads Kim Thompson and Gary Groth] are driven by what comics should be, not how much they might make.

This print edition has a really cute cover, too.

At the speed of blog

With CBS now promising to "redouble its efforts" to determine the authenticity of the now-notorious Bush memos, San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor muses on just how big a role bloggers played in the controversy. His conclusion, which I agree with, is that even without the blogosphere, mainstream news media would have raised serious questions about the memos by now. But, the whole process happened much faster because of critical bloggers.

Regardless of what one thinks of the bloggers' politics, they advanced the memo story. And they did it fast -- no doubt more quickly than the mass media would have done.

They could fuel the firestorm for several reasons. First, they were passionate about their cause: looking for reasons to shoot down the CBS report, which turned out to be a huge target.

Second, they are many. We in the media -- at least those of us who might have been prepared to jump instantly into the question of whether the memos were real -- are relatively few.

Third, the velocity of information is so much greater with digital technology. What once would have taken days or weeks to make its way through the media sphere now ricochets around the world in hours.

One danger in such a world is the spread of misinformation, corrected too late to erase or even very much mitigate the damage. Some hard-core partisans don't seem to care about this, but the rest of us should.

And it's worth noting that this would not have become such a public controversy had the major media not picked