The traditional media fights back over Smeargate

So according Janet Daley,Smeargate is not proof of the ascendancy of the blogosphere over the newspapers.

Writing on the Telegraph blog

simply offered his material to the newspapers in the sweet old fashioned way as recipients of leaks have been doing for generations.

And Stephen Pollard in the Times this morning writes that

It's important, however, to keep blogs in context. Those who dismiss them as an irrelevance to real politics, like those bloggers who dismiss the mainstream media as archaic, are equally wrong. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people still get their news from traditional media, whether it is newspapers or broadcasters.

adding that

In the end, the difference between quality newspapers and even serious blogs is that your default reaction to a newspaper piece should be that it is true, whereas your default reaction to a blog post should be that it might be true, but it might equally well be a pack of lies."