JAY CURRIE: Blogs 1, 60 Minutes 0. “The more basic question is how could a rabble of bloggers, in one day, provide hard core proof of forgery when major news organizations took those documents at face value?”

UPDATE: Colby Cosh is merciless:

This, I guess, explains just why traditional print and electronic journalists sometimes speak of the Internet as a large, frightening, amorphous, destructive force. Considering that the most respected journalistic entity in the world has been revealed at this hour to be sky-high on goofballs, it also explains why anyone who attempts to defend the exclusive privileges of “traditional media” is eligible for physical annihilation on the grounds of incurable virulent idiocy. Sorry: I know you’ve heard this before–there’s even a lame term of art for it (“blogger triumphalism”). But I have, if you’ll forgive me for pointing it out, blundered into a forefront-ish position in Internet journalism as practiced in a G7 country. And this 60 Minutes business is still making me go “Holy shit.”

Yeah. And even in the — highly unlikely — event that CBS can somehow show, after the fact, that these documents were genuine, it’s obvious now that they acted with enormous sloppiness and disregard for obvious questions about their genuineness before publishing. The journalism is over now, and the most they can do is lawyering.

Hugh Hewitt has more thoughts on old vs. new media. And here’s a much lengthier commentary on the same topic: “Yesterday, the man bit the dog. Boy howdy, did he ever.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: And here’s the sad result when the blogosphere employs CBS’s standards.

Hey, Dan Rather’s job may be open soon. . . .

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The culprit has been exposed. I never liked that guy.