I have to say that the knowledge that reporters in the courthouse media room had about the Libby case was remarklably good, certainly far more comprehensive than the thick-witted credulity shown by Steno Sue Schmidt and others as the shoveled one press release after another issued by Arkansas political operatives onto the front pages of the Washington Post during Whitewater.  Even when the story made patently no sense reporters failed to ask appropriate questions.  I do not know whether Glenn Greenwald is right and blogs are having an influence, but it did seem that the abililty of the Barbara Comstocks of the world to fob off outrageous spin as fact was somewhat diminished in this case.

One of those journalists was James Gordon Meeks, who said we "owned" the story on Washington Journal in the video above. 

And he wasn't the only one who noticed. Glenn Greenwald did too, and  Jeff Jarvis had this to say:

In the rearchitecture of news, what needs to happen is that people are driven to the best coverage, not the 87th version of the same coverage. This will work for publications and news organizations. It will also work for individuals; this is how a lone reporter’s work (and reputation) can surface. We saw that happening with the Libby trial and Firedoglake’s liveblogging of it. As Jay Rosen said at our NPR confab last week — and I’ve heard this elsewhere — theirs became the best source for keeping up on the trial. Reporters and editors knew it and were using it. So those same reporters and editors should have been sending their readers to the blog as a service: ‘We’re not liveblogging it, but they are. We’ll give you our analysis and reporting later. Enjoy.’ That is where the architecture of news must go because links enable it and economics demand it.

If you're one of the people who contributed to the publication of Marcy's book, take a bow because we could not have done this without you.  You did this, and we cannot express how much gratitude we all have for being able to be here.

And if you appreciated our coverage, and would like to see more of the same in the future, feel free to hit the PayPal button on the sidebar.  We're just getting started… 

(thanks to Scarce for making the video clip)