What bloggers know

It's a common companion to that first morning cup of coffee. It is overtaking newspapers and "Good Morning America." In offices worldwide the morning break finds workers scanning their favorites. Can't sleep? Bored? Lonely? Looking for synchronicity? Just open the blogosphere. That is, log onto to your favorite blogs. Whole cyber-cities are just a few keystrokes away.

The blogosphere phenomenon has been chronicled in business magazines, university seminars, in political back rooms and on Main Street America. Psychologists study blogamania; they worry that blogging destroys interpersonal relationships since bloggers commune with cyber-friends while real-life connections languish. Advertisers pay for space in the margins of the high-traffic blogs. Students use them to share information on professors and their tests. For good or for ill, the blogosphere is part of American life.

The blog format is so popular that newspapers, magazines and radio have added their own staff bloggers to insure their fair share of the blog traffic. The power of blogs over public perception entices the pinstripe brigade from Madison Avenue to Hollywood. Paid professionals seed the blogosphere to create a "presence" for their clients – celebrities and politicians. Bloggers pick up news reports and exponentially increase exposure, creating a "buzz" within hours. There are blog awards and blog statistics trackers. There are even blog coalitions. Famous columnists are rapidly becoming famous bloggers – without editors or syndicators between them and what they really want to say. (Ann Coulter recently told Sean Hannity to look for her at Anncoulter.com).

And Michelle Malkin, herself an enormously popular blogger, has pointed out that bloggers function as the truth posse, riding herd on AP, Reuters and others whose "news-breaking" stories are closer to "news-fabricating" stories. Can anyone forget the drubbing CBS' "60 Minutes" received at the hands of bloggers over the faked "Bush memos"? Charles Johnson catapulted into national spotlight when he was interviewed on the cable talk programs for his exposure of the faked newswire photos during the Lebanese-Israeli war. In short, watchdog blogs have rapidly become the bane of the media establishment. Despite their own credibility crisis, the grand old dames of the media establishment insist that bloggers cannot be trusted since they are not verified or monitored. And they aren't … except by other bloggers, which is more than can be said for much of the media establishment.

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Less known, however, is the growing realization among researchers: Bloggers know things. Important things. I don't mean a recipe for anthrax or that elusive secret sorority recipe for red velvet cake. Bloggers constitute a global web of stringers, gathering data and gossip, trading sources and connecting the global dots.

I'm talking about fingering low altitude manipulation of the public by services such as The Weather Channel, where Heidi Cullen wants to strong-arm meteorologists who refuse to dramatize global warming. Bloggers tag hapless politicians with photos and comments the mainstream press declines to put into the record.

I'm talking about unreported geopolitical tangles over new oil pipelines or the ignored clashes between Russian merchants and Islamic cell groups. Saudi Arabia is running out of oil, but the Caspian Sea has a new oil fields and the U.S. and Turkey are on deck with a new pipeline into the Mediterranean. Thus, the chessboard of the Middle East has quietly become a whole new game, but you haven't heard it from Brian Williams at NBC's Nightly News. Bloggers know that the Chinese have rolled out a shiny new threat, their J-10 fighter jet with a reported top speed of Mach 4, that blasts past the U.S. Raptor at mach 2. Blogger cartoons are clever and courageous or crude and callous, depending on one's viewpoint.

For the researcher, whether professional or amateur, it is clear that bloggers represent a wholly other source of information. Essentially, it means access to the information and ideas of hundreds of thousands of minds educated and trained in every category of human inquiry. While it is true that most blogsites are little more than a personal page for dreams or rants, there are an astounding number of high-quality blogs with a specific informational focus. Blogs are written by students, political analysts, government experts, professors, retired military, travelers, doctors, merchant bankers, scientists, artists and journalists. They have a penchant for communicating information that otherwise would not get past the office door, the notebook, the backroom, the lab, the confidential memo. Blogs often cite sources and link to little known organizations or think tanks, virtual storerooms of treasures. Naturally, verification is crucial.

In the age of info-wars, bloggers are the great democratizers. Blogs typically permit others to post responses. This insures that someone brighter, better informed or better connected will add, subtract or contradict a blogger's claims. Think of it as Everyman's peer reviewed journal. In addition to the formally published papers of the experts, blogsites add the speculative, the conceptual, even the intuitive, and then invite others to cross-pollinate with fresh insight. Good blogs are enormously fertile sources.

It is possible to enter a keyword, click "search blogs" and dredge up material not found readily in news reports or journal articles. A blog search for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline returned 1,445 results, while the same scan of news reports returned a scant 62 entries. It's true that the news media have space limitations and must choose which stories to carry. It is also true that obscuring important events and developments shapes public opinion.

William Buckley once famously quipped that he preferred to be governed by the first thousand names picked from the New York phone book than be by ruled by the faculty of Harvard. The context was different but Buckley's point has an application to the blogosphere. I'd trust a thousand bloggers sooner than I would trust editors of the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.

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Mary Jo Anderson is a contributing reporter to WorldNetDaily and a long-time reporter for the Catholic magazine Crisis.