Posner...Better Late, Than Never

The Minute Man links to a lengthy article in the New York Times Book Review containing what could have been read here nine months earlier. Judge Richard Posner opines:

The charge by mainstream journalists that blogging lacks checks and balances is obtuse. The blogosphere has more checks and balances than the conventional media; only they are different. The model is Friedrich Hayek's classic analysis of how the economic market pools enormous quantities of information efficiently despite its decentralized character, its lack of a master coordinator or regulator, and the very limited knowledge possessed by each of its participants.

Indeed it is. As the FLUBA Committee on the Thankless Task of Educating J. Bradford DeLong put it in more detail in October 2004:

It's that the superior volume of information available from millions of sources is going to swamp that available to individual reporters. Journalism, as it's been practiced, will sooner or later disappear because it's inefficient. With modern communication technology, speedy, detailed, highly specific information, will outcompete multi-million dollar network anchormen, and the ink-stained wretches pounding reportorial beats.