He's right, so far as it goes.

But I would also observe that most blogs come pretty close to reflecting a pretty dull and obvious kind of conventional wisdom.

Most liberal sites are collections of reasons why all of the most hard-hitting liberal arguments are reasonable and true. And there's a vast number of conservative sites that are really more pro-Bush than they are conservative -- that is, they defend pretty much anything the administration does and exude this partisan spirit that divides the world of the "good guys" who are rhetorically loyal to their man and the "other" awful folks who disagree.

Your site -- and OxBlog and CalPundit and Tacitus, etc -- are the exceptions to an otherwise pretty strong pattern in the blogosphere.

Did you read the New Republic article on Joe Trippi? The article says that Trippi's use of Dean's Blog For America is revolutionizing campaign politics.

I'm fairly new to blogging, so the observation has probably been made before, but it appears that the blogosphere is becoming closer to the bulletin board system discussed by Orson Scott Card in _Ender's Game_ : namely a forum for people to rationally (and irrationally) debate and for memes to be established and distributed. The ability to fact-check was not something he mentioned, but is a somewhat logical extension of having fast, worldwide access.

So, how long before Atrios becomes the first Hegemon? :)

Isn't the strength of blogs that you have to be connected to use it. Imagine if your newspaper came with an internet link and Google. Wouldn't you fact check some things that sound implausible, or send off a letter to your representative when you get angered at what he is doing or not doing ?

Whenever I argue person to person nowadays, it almost never fails that there is a point at which one of us will say: that's crap, let's google it up.

I'm not as convinced as others that the blogosphere is as fact checking as many think it is. I see a lot of bloggers still closed in their own worlds.

I agree with GT that most bloggers are in their own worlds; however these worlds are fairly wide if the blogger is any good. I am a liberal blogger, but Tacitus and Drezner are on my daily read list and another half dozen conservative/liberterian bloggers get my traffic at least twice a week as part of my own factchecking my ass.

I also agree that the Blogosphere is wonderful as a news filter and aggregator. Just go over to the Kos diaries, and you can find almost anything that you ever want to with regards to polling and Democratic primary politics. Go over to Voloch and you'll find a link and a very quick summation on almost any legal argument around. It is a wonderful storehouse of diffuse knowledge that is accessible to skilled info retrievers at very low costs. Plus every now and then the analysis for the top-flight bloggers are incredible.

The Blogosphere hopefully will not be the info-dot.com bust equivilent in being able to solve all of humanity's problems while producing extra-ordinary returns on capital, but it is a useful tool.

In fact the more I think about it the less I agree with the idea that the blogosphere works as a great fact checker.

Just look at how many bloggers (Jane Galt, Musil, Luskin, I think Tom Maguire as well) were proven wrong and were shown to have no technical understanding of the CA energy crisis which Krugman got right.

Did any of them ever correct themselves?

The very fact they were proven wrong does what ?

support my point...
not support my point ...

or in other words,
you can't get away with posting crap in the blogosphere. Can you get away with in the mainstream media (including Faux) ? Do I need to ask ?

I have to agree with William Swann, as far as the average blog. The question is, which ones will be most influential, and gravitate to the top of the list. Glenn Reynolds is less partisan than your average columnist, but not always that much so. There's still plenty of hope, especially if we bloggers think what we can do to point things the right way.

It's funny what attitude and personal bias can do to a person. My feeling on the blogs is exactly the opposite of William Swann and David Weisman.

As I explore blogs, I tend to come back to the ones the strike me as intelligent and intellectually honest and ignore the rest. Although these make up a very small percentage of what's out there regardless of the persuasion, every one I've found tends conservative.

I'ved actually made a pointed search for liberal blogs that fit the bill--intelligent and intellectually honest--and I've pretty well given up. There aren't any.

Kausfiles comes close, but Kaus is always bashing liberals. From a place of love maybe, but he doesn't defend the liberal position on anything. And nobody who does does it well.

Apologies to David Weisman. I may have read too much into your first sentence