A little selfcelebrating news from the world of blogging mentally moved me up in the world yesterday as I in The Business section of New York Times read an article under the headline:

At a suit`s core: Are Bloggers reporters too?

I`ll try to boil it down:
The case which involves company secrets (filed by Apple) that Apple says were disclosed on several web sites, is closely being followed by fellow bloggers worldwide but have broad on complications for juournalist working in the more traditional news organisations as well.
If the court in Santa Clara County rules that bloggers are journalists, the privelige of keeping news sources confidential will be applied to a large new group of people.
Apple has long had a devoted following, and leaked information about new Apple products had apperared on web-sites for years. Apple has asked the court to compel the websites that displayed their product information (thinksecret.com, Appleinsider.com, PoerPage.org) to disclose their identity.
The discussion thus goes under what circumstances an online forum should be forced to sdisclose a source behind information being posted, as the is no principled distintion between a Nww York times reporter and a blogger for these purposes. Both operate news sources for wide swaths of the general public.
Blogs and blogging, are already becoming much more powerful and influential and some have a readership that exceed those of smalltown newspapers. At the recent lecture with superwoman Naomi Klein she also so emphasied the importance of blogs, especially in connection with the war in Iraq: specific blogs with different specific focuses had given her contact and insigt from within iraq, that does not come a through the corporate media-apparatus.
CBS and anchorman Dan Rather suffered a major defeat by being “blogged” after being under intense scrutiny in the case of El Presidente© records from his time in the National Guard.
As the mainstream media has become more and more corporate and more and more like the government and corporate bodies that mainstream journalist used to report on, a lot this stuff haa now fallen into the hands of bloggers – to do what meainstream folks used to do: serving the same purpose as to keep the bad guys honest.