My wife made the same observation. Nailing Rather required bringing the MSM into the fight, in order to "validate" the errors we'd caught in Rather's charges. The MSM was out to lunch for this campaign.
Indeed, I recall that the Washington Post was one of the first to follow-up and develop the Rather story. Yet, when the Post finally got around to covering the Eason Jordan story, they assigned Howard Kurtz, of all people, and he performed a whitewash. Well, the story was on his beat, after all. But Kurtz and the Post pointedly did not alert their readers to the fact that Kurtz was also employed by CNN and, thus, highly conflicted.
I took this to mean that the Post had decided, for their own good (and, perhaps, the entire MSM), the Eason Jordan story was best buried. It was a tacit recognition of the power of the web -- and, this time, they weren't about to aid and abet the upstarts, Lovelady's "salivating morons" and "lynch mob".
Still, Jordan's position eventually became untenable...and he resigned. Neither the Washington Post nor any other MSM outlet ever so much as viewed his statements with "concern" -- much less "alarm".
The Eason Jordan story was begun by, sustained by and finished by the web community -- operating virtually alone. That is a watershed moment.
We're neither kingmakers nor kingkillers here at Free Republic. But we probably wield more power than we might think.
Would Rather have been discredited without Buckhead and Free Republic? Possibly...but the odds would have been measurably longer.
Would Bush have won Florida in 2000 without the efforts of FReepers on the ground, throwing a monkey wrench into the Democrats' efforts to manufacture votes? I'm not certain.
I'm convinced that, without Free Republic, William Jefferson Clinton would never have been impeached.
And I rather doubt Eason Jordan will be either forgetting or forgiving us. Howell Raines won't be sending us a Valentine's Day card, either.
With that power comes responsibility. The guy who runs this place has set the standards. So far, I believe, we've all been a good check on each other. At any given time, every "reporter" on Free Republic has a thousand-or-so of the toughest editors in the business checking his work, testing his theses, confirming his facts...and correcting his grammar and spelling.
All in all, it's an honor and a privilege to be here. And, yes, I believe we've done some very good work lately...and there is, indeed, a new paradigm in the news business today.
And THAT, as you and others have noted, IS a paradigm shift different from what has come before. As the Chinese say, may we live in interesting times. John / Billybob
And unlike the MSM, ours is an open boardroom, with all discussions taking place publicly and in real-time.