While I'm quite enjoying this blog thing, I am somewhat stunned at the arrogance of the mindset some bloggers have. Witness Mickey Kaus trying to make the argument that Woodward and Bernstein were the first bloggers.

Kaus admits that they weren't bloggers (hardly shocking since let's see, ARPANet was only a few years old). But he argues that

(the) Post's editor Ben Bradlee instinctively understood -- you keep the story going, with hit after little hit, which gets people talking, which panics sources into coming forward, which gets other papers into the hunt and ultimately brings much more information to light, even if this means you occasionally get something wrong

Kaus goes on to argue that this is also a virtue of blogging, and that Woodstein were paving the way for this new version of journalism. But he's getting the argument the wrong way around.

Journalism has long been viewed as "the first rough draft of history," as Bradlee put it. Competition from television has prompted newspapers to move back from the attitude of get it first, but if anything, the 9/11 attacks provided ample evidence that the attitude still prevails on TV.

News blogs (which are far from the only kind out there, I might add), are thus hearkening back to an older form of journalism, rather than paving the way to the a frontier. And if Kaus had any sense of history, he'd see that. The argument is reminiscent of the online auctioneers who think they invented the idea of a "Dutch auction" (hint: there's a reason it's called Dutch.)