Our occasional contributor Bookworm has a long essay on her site Bookworm Room today making the case that the mainstream media owe a debt of gratitude to the blogosphere for serving as a "crucible" in which increasingly rushed and inaccurate reporting is vetted better than it ever was in the romanticized days of fact-checking and editorial even balance. I suspect her tongue, if not quite in her cheek, is pointed in the general direction of it. As always with Bookworm, it is a graceful and entertaining read:The blogosphere has finally created a crucible for the calcified American media. Reporters can no longer rest on their credentials and try pass off as facts unchecked stories, suspect sources, and biased reporting. They now have to go into every story prepared to do their best, because someone is finally watching — and not only watching, but able to react immediately with corrective information.Given all this, what we in the blogosphere need to do is convince the MSM...(Read Full Post)