Peggy Noonan writes one of the better pieces I have seen on blogs in today’s WSJ: The Blogs Must Be Crazy wherein she list some of the strengths of the Blogosphere.

She correctly note:

The MSM isn’t over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.

The blogosphere isn’t some mindless eruption of wild opinion. That isn’t their power. This is their power:

And she goes on to list and discuss seven items. The most noteworthy being:

1. They use the tools of journalists (computer, keyboard, a spirit of inquiry, a willingness to ask the question) and of the Internet (Google, LexisNexis) to look for and find facts that have been overlooked, ignored or hidden. They look for the telling quote, the ignored statistic, the data that have been submerged. What they are looking for is information that is true. When they get it they post it and include it in the debate. This is a public service.

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3. Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately…

[…]

4. Bloggers are also selling the smartest take on a story. They’re selling an original insight, a new area of inquiry. Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles has his bright take, Andrew Sullivan had his, InstaPundit has his. They’re all selling their shrewdness, experience, depth. This too is a public service.

All quite correct and the whole list with its entire analysis is worth reading.

She also makes some predictions, among them:

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 [sic.] 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.

All quite correct–and I would add that what a careful examination of credentials will do is expose the fact that many reporters, while they may have an excellent j-school pedigree, don’t really know anything about a given subject upon which they are reporting, while many bloggers are professionals who focus specifically one the subject in question. I am not saying that there aren’t reporters who are experts on what they report about, there clearly are such folks. But, it is often manifestly obvious that even reporters at major news outlets are generalists who often lack basic knowledge necessary to properly understand what they are reporting upon. Case in point: the NYT story from earlier in the week on Iraq. As I noted, the reporter clearly lacked some basic understanding of how multi-party democracy typically works, which detracted from the credibility of his story.

Along with the ability to function instantaneously, which is quite significant, one of the main strengths of blogging is the ability for area experts to comment on the news in a way that currently is not possible via the MSM. Who would you rather have analyzing a major legal story: Glenn Reynolds/Eugene Volokh/Stephen Bainbridge, etc. or some reporter who happened to be assigned to the story? Blogs hardly replace the MSM, but they can cleary augment the ability of the information-seeking public to have as complete a picture as possible of the news.