Bloggers' Big News Needs Scaling Down

James McGrath Morris wrote in Legal Times Bloggers' Big News Needs Scaling Down

It took the Media Bloggers Association two years of negotiations with court officials to win the right to join the media frenzy. Kim Pearson, a professor at the College of New Jersey, was among the vanguard who took a turn in the press pool. According to Pearson, Judge Reggie Walton's decision to allow bloggers to participate in the trial opened "a new chapter in the debate over the legitimacy of bloggers as gatherers and disseminators of news."

True. But it may not be a debate favorable to blogging. The admission of bloggers into a press pool serves as a timely moment to examine the Achilles' heel of this newfangled form of journalism. Despite all its claims of whiz-bang newness and democracy-promoting attributes, blogging may turn out to be nothing more than a fresh version of an old journalistic gimmick. More important, it may not necessarily be such a wonderful thing for democracy.