rent Lott's downfall had implications not only for the nation's politics, but for the media as well. According to a number of observers, the events following his remarks about Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential bid put the swelling ranks of online ''bloggers'' on the media map in much the same way that ''Operation Desert Storm'' ushered in the era of cable news and the Gennifer Flowers/Bill Clinton tryst focused attention on supermarket tabloids.
While the mainstream press was slow to publicize Lott's fateful flirtation with segregationist nostalgia, that void was eagerly filled by the authors of the online journals called Web logs (hence the term ''bloggers'') such as Joshua Micah Marshall, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, and Mickey Kaus. Mixing vocal opinion with historical fact and context, they helped keep the Lott saga on simmer until a critical mass of people started paying attention.
In the New York Post, John Podhoretz wrote a column lauding the role of the ''blogosphere'' in the drama, noting that ''there's nothing more exciting than watching a new medium mature before your eyes.'' ''Thank God, for the Internet,'' echoed syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, congratulating bloggers for being ''truly free of the dependence on access, and the need to play nice with the powers that be.''
While kudos were no doubt earned, even some ''bloggers'' acknowledge that the rush to extoll them for bagging Lott's hide is a bit overdone.
''I think you can exaggerate the role of blogs in this. I think it's probably the case that it would have been a scandal no matter what'' says Reynolds, a University of Tennessee Law professor who operates the Instapundit.com site. Adds Marshall, of talkingpointsmemo.com: ''I really don't like this blog triumphalism.''
Whatever the bloggers' impact in the Lott case, the episode did serve to turn the spotlight on a hybrid form of journalism/commentary/conversation that is exploding onto the media landscape. According to an online Wired News story, there are now almost a million registered users of a popular blogger software, a jump of more than 50 percent from the previous year. And their variety is reflected in the blogging sites on Instapundit.com which run the gamut from major journalism stars to ''pure bloggers'' with names such as ''Big Arm Woman,'' ''The Fat Guy,'' and ''No Watermelons Allowed.''
Some purists say the blogs that capture the spirit of the Internet are those independent, non-journalistic enterprises like ''No Watermelons Allowed,'' which included recent postings on everything from the looming war in Iraq to a listing of annoyingly syrupy pop songs like ''Tell Laura I Love Her'' and ''Honey.'' Not everyone, however, is impressed with such stream-of-consciousness commentary. The Wired News piece quoted a journalism professor dismissing bloggers as self-indulgent, misinformed ''navel gazers.''
Bill Mitchell, online editor at the Poynter Institute media think tank, is not a big fan of the constant opining that dominates many blogs. But he thinks they could become an important adjunct to the journalism industry. Citing Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sportwriter Cliff Christl's blog on the Green Bay Packers and one by Dan Gillmor, the technology columnist of the San Jose Mercury News, Mitchell says: ''If I were a beat reporter, I would think a blog would be a really valuable part of my tool kit [given] the opportunity it creates for journalists to selectively serve particular chunks of the audience.''
In the meantime, the emergence of such mainstream media bloggers as Sullivan - a pundit, columnist and former New Republic editor - and Marshall - whose has written for outlets from The New York Times to the Washington Monthly - has increased the medium's clout in Washington's corridors of power, in part because blogs are becoming standard reading material for other journalists.
''It's an outside-the-Beltway phenomenon with a lot of inside-the-Beltway readers,'' Reynolds says.
''There's a portion of what some of what these blogs do that is the public version of the reporters on the bus sort of hashing things out,'' says Marshall. ''There is an insidery aspect of this.''
Craig Crawford, executive publisher of the Hotline political newletter, scans those Web sites for buzz and tidbits early every morning, explaining that ''they are the trenches where the mainstream media sees the incoming artillery.''
USA Today political columnist Walter Shapiro also uses blogs - including ABC's ''The Note'' and Mickey Kaus's ''kausfiles'' - to catch a whiff of the Washington zeitgeist. But he isn't quite ready to declare that the Lott story has ushered in a new media heirarchy.
''Like every revolution,'' he says, blogging ''is overhyped on the way up, overscorned on the way down, and settles into the middle realm of reality.''
