Peggy Noonan defends bloggers.....

....in the Wall Street Journal no less.

Tip from The Common Sense Desk.

It is a strange world when I regularly read LewRockwell.Com and the American Conservative. Now Peggy Noonan defends bloggers against their attack from the MSM.

"Salivating morons." "Scalp hunters." "Moon howlers." "Trophy hunters." "Sons of Sen. McCarthy." "Rabid." "Blogswarm." "These pseudo-journalist lynch mob people."

This is excellent invective. It must come from bloggers. But wait, it was the mainstream media and their maidservants in the elite journalism reviews, and they were talking about bloggers!

Those MSMers have gone wild, I tell you! The tendentious language, the low insults. It's the Wild Wild West out there. We may have to consider legislation.

She then ticks off the points that give the bloggers their power, go to the source and check it out. She concludes with an excellent rebuttal to the bloggers are untrained argument and the future of blogs and bloggers:

Someone is going to address the "bloggers are untrained journalists" question by looking at exactly what "training," what education in the art/science/craft/profression of journalism, the reporters and editors of the MSM have had in the past 60 years or so. It has seemed to me the best of them never went to J-school but bumped into journalism along the way--walked into a radio station or newspaper one day and found their calling. Bloggers signify a welcome return to that old style. In journalism you learn by doing, which is what a lot of bloggers are doing.

Finally, someday in America the next big bad thing is going to happen, and lines are going to go down, and darkness is going to descend, and the instant communication we now enjoy is going to be compromised. People in one part of the country are going to wonder how people in another part are doing. Little by little lines are going to come up, and people are going to log on, and they're going to get the best, most comprehensive, and ultimately, just because it's there, most heartening information from . . . some lone blogger out there. And then another. They're going to do some big work down the road.

She is saying that bloggers are what journalists used to be, some of them at least. Head over to the WSJ Opinion Page and check out the entire article. (you need a painless registration)
Update
Jazz chimes in over at Running Scared, A Lonely Defense of the MSM. While he makes some valid points I maintain that the MSM is indefensible as it exists today. He is correct that there is a lack of governance in the blogosphere but that can't be used to defend the MSM as the only governance there comes from the administration and corporate interests.