Well, the fashion segment is over. Jeff Jarvis didn't like it. We're over to more serious stuff now: Who is a Journalist in 2005? with John Podhoretz, Richard Fernandez, Claudia Rosset, David Corn. Larry Kudlow is stuck in traffic apparently.

Corn: "Blogging couldn't exist without the mainstream media and bloggers can still learn a lot from "the old dinosaurs". I think he's right.

Belmont Club's Richard Fernandez argues that the blogs complement mainstream outlets - gives Bill Roggio as an example in the way he covers Iraq.

Kudlow's in: "Feels better after he has blogged".

Corn highlights the increased access to information and argues that Cronkite-style of reporting is history, such is the impact of specialized blogs.

Kudlow: "Is the NYT just a liberal blogsite?" Rosset says yes, but it's attached to a large corporate enterprise, but ultimately every site is a blog.

The discussion goes to the blogger's responsibility to try and ensure factual correctness, which at times can be challenging for one-man operations. And: everyone is biased, so blogging equally creates a market to disseminate lies, accroding to Rosset. This is a very valid point and it's what I would consider the risk of propagating a lie that then becomes "accepted groupthink" in the blogosphere.

In response, Corn calls for bloggers to maintain "a standard of accuracy" and learn from the MSM mistakes. Again, it's something I would strongly concur with and the discussion in the bar last night touched on this. The nature of the new medium - fast, quick - sometimes impairs accuracy. This is why I tend to write longer posts, they reflect a thinking process where I try to maintain a level of accuracy while ensuring most aspects of the issue at hand are covered.

Reynolds weighs in: MSM have thrown away their "killer ap" by moving away from direct reporting to an opinion-based franchise. Yet, he agrees that reporting from the ground - say Iraq - is equally subject to bias and accuracy issues. Readers however have far more tools at their disposal to assess the facts.