A story on the mainstream media's quickly deteriorating controlling interest in American news and information can be found today in, of all places, the Los Angeles Times:

Within 90 minutes of [blogger Charles Johnson's] post [on the CBS Texas Air National Guard memos], the Power Line site was linked to perhaps the best-known conservative site of all — the Drudge Report, made famous when Matt Drudge took a lead role in the first reports on the relationship between then-President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

"That was a quantum jump in awareness," said Scott Johnson. "It was wildly circulating in the blogosphere until Drudge linked us. Then it was instantly known to a million people, and it was all of a sudden a legitimate story."

Suddenly, the story line shifted from the question Democrats had been trying to ask — whether Bush received special treatment in the Guard — to whether a network long detested by conservatives had been duped in its quest to air a report critical of the president in the midst of the reelection campaign.

Journalists at mainstream media outlets rushed to consult with experts to check the validity of the documents. The claims of seemingly legitimate analysts posting commentary online could not be ignored.

"If the blog enthusiasts wanted to write a better scenario, they'd have a hard time coming up with one more spectacular than this one," said Jim Geraghty, host of the Kerry Spot blog published by the conservative National Review, whose e-mail queue was filled by font experts from across the nation wanting to weigh in.

Has the tide turned? Not entirely. The Drudge Report is still a clearinghouse for mainstream news, often communicating the left-tilted narratives exactly as intended. Matt Drudge's sources are mostly old media; talk radio receives occasional attention but the Powerline link was the first of its kind for weblogs. Thus a story in yesterday's Boston Globe, misquoting and misrepresenting the blogosphere's most prominent forensic analyst contra CBS (a Kerry-voting Democrat, no less), with the effect of blunting criticism of the network and its fishy memos, would stand a better chance of receiving a link from Drudge and being seen by millions than the analyst's weblog-bound testimony and protestations to the Globe.

Similarly, if the power of new media is not yet enough to publicly shame CBS into confession, one or more mainstream outlets will be needed to engage the necessary momentum. That may mean, in a broadcast network sense, fratricide. But even Fox seems reluctant to land the killing blow. On this morning's Fox News Sunday, the panel's rightists — Brit Hume and Bill Kristol — shook a few fingers but ultimately shrugged their shoulders, while NPR partisan Juan Williams again raged at the impudence of ignoring the content of forged memos. Their conclusion was an ambivalent stalemate, even though bloggers had already whittled CBS's ambiguous list of "could be" 1973 typewriters down to next to nothing. At least the Times reporter understands. Who will follow him? Who will turn on CBS for the sake of honesty in American journalism and political discourse?

GIVE ME A BREAK: Why is it that the least qualified sit behind published columns? And again, the blogosphere corrects journalists.