Little fleas have littler fleas...

There could be another donnybrook shaping up along the lines of the recent Jack Shafer-Jay Rosen Blog War except that, as Instapundit points out:

Memo to the professional journalists: When lawyers start talking about how you've repeatedly libeled them, that's bad.

Instapundit is referring to this post in Power Line:

I talked to Commentary Editor Eric Ringham today, and he acknowledged that the Strib didn't do any fact-checking at all before they accused us of not fact-checking.

This was in response to the story, Camille J. Gage: Note of caution is in order in the world of blogs in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis:

There was no factual basis for the voter fraud allegations. Powerline posted the story based on the word of a single individual employed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). This was hearsay at best, posted as "news" at a time when voter registration efforts by the Democrats and 527 groups were coming under fire by conservatives.

Camille is probably too young to remember "Deep Throat", the unnamed single source who brought down an American President. She almost gets it, though:

And therein lies the cautionary Catch-22: Bloggers may serve as media watchdogs, but who will watch the blogs? Do you have time to fact-check what you read online?

What Camille doesn't realize is that blogs have something that the mainstream media have lost: a diversity of political views. A blogger, especially an haut bloggeur like Power Line, will be savaged by other blogs for screwing up.

The Dread Pundit Bluto remains convinced that the most glorious mission of the blog is to watch the watchers.