From: "Jeff Raymond" jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com
When the mainstream media consistently uses blogs as reliable information for their stories, there's absolutely no reason why we can't do the same thing.
-Jeff
It's a question of the "web of trust." My belief is that part of a journalist's skill involves knowing what sources to trust (and in obtaining reliable information from not-fully-reliable sources through various means, such as cross-checking with other not-fully-reliable sources). My belief is also that a journalist measures a blog posting, or anything else, against a large body of background that _he_ has, that _I_ don't have, that _he_ can use to judge the credibility of the source.
Just because the New York Times' source for _a_ story is _a_ blog doesn't mean that _any_ blog has the same reliability as The New York Times.
It's like saying that a "when mainstream surgeons consistently use scalpels as reliable tools for cutting into living flesh, there's no reason why we can't do the same thing."
Of course, if one believes that the existence of bad journalist and bad surgeons implies that journalists and surgeons don't genuinely possess any special skills, then it would follow that anyone can use a blog (or a scalpel) just as safely as a journalist (or a surgeon).
It was Dilbert's pointy-haired boss reasoned that "anything I don't understand must be easy..."