Chris Lydon’s two-hour NPR show last night brought together some of my very favorite bloggers to discuss the effect of Internet and blogging on politics. There was a lot of talk about the “popping of the bubble” (as Ed Cone put it) with a healthy respect for what blogging has done for and to politics already. Chris is, of course, the best at what he does, and reminded everyone of the importance of blogging despite the Dean campaign’s crash landing in Iowa.

Although many of the guests and Chris himself said that blogs are a grassroots tool open to anyone, the quite reasonable focus on high-traffic bloggers may have led people to think that the blogosphere is a new daily, opinion-based newspaper in which we can read columns by journalists and columnists who have important views that have, on occasion, shaped real world politics. Now, I love the A-List, at least the portion of it I read. And it’s thrilling that these are people that we have made popular, whatever the network dynamics are that form A-Lists in the first place. But put ’em together, and the A-List is another daily paper.

Blogging strikes me as more significant than the creation of a competitor to USA Today, albeit one that’s fresher, livelier, more personable. Blogs constitute conversations, social networks, and our proxy selves all at once. That’s a trio no other “medium” has ever put together and, as Jay Rosen said on Chris’ show last night, it’s challenging our very model of authority.

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