Are blogs influential? Ask the New York Times

Writing in his blog "Buzz Machine" today, Jeff Jarvis responds to New York Times' harsh criticism of how major blogs appear to break unfinished stories and thus foster damaging rumors.
Dubbing current newspaper practices "Product vs. Process" journalism, Jarvis squarely confronts an issue about blogs reporting news that is in transition -- or as they used to say in J-school, "developing." His new process matrix of how news is currently reported appears above.
Here's his take: "The problem: journalism’s myth of perfection. And it’s not just journalism that holds this myth. It is the byproduct of the means and requirements of mass production: If you have just one chance to put out a product and it has to serve everyone the same, you come to believe it’s perfect because it has to be, whether that product is a car (we are the experts, we took six years to tool up, it damned well better be perfect) or government (where, I’m learning, employees have a phobic fear of mistakes - because citizens and journalists will jump on them) or newspapers (we package the world each day in a box with a bow on it - you’re welcome).
"The posse of pros who jumped on me in Twitter this morning will say that they do make mistakes and corrections but first they always try to get it right - perfect - while bloggers instead spread rumors. But that’s where the fundamental misunderstanding comes. It’s a matter of timing, of the order of things, of the process of journalism. Newspaper people see their articles as finished products of their work. Bloggers see their posts as part of the process of learning."
This issue won't go away, especially as newspapers migrate more and more toward online reporting.
One commenter to Jarvis's blog summed it up:
"An excellent hit back to the old-school heavies who think that blogging is destroying journalism, when it’s actually reinventing the way we get our news.
"Sure, stories might come out a bit half baked, but in the end, we will have more truth, more perspective and a greater-encompassing version of the facts.
"For years, we never questioned what papers wrote. Their word was taken at gospel. Even when errors were made, it never mattered, as the retraction was never as prominent as the original story.
"Now we get to question the writer, the sources and the facts. That’s a good thing."