Here’s a very good piece by Ed Carson at Investor’s Business Daily on the emergence of the new media: Blogs Take Lead Role In CBS Memo Furor.

Detractors say blogs are unedited and exist in a self-created universe of like-minded bloggers and readers where disagreeable facts and opinions don’t enter. Rumors can spread and gain credibility with each link.

That can happen. But immediate critiques by readers and other blogs — and critiques of those critiques — serve as sort of a peer review.

“If I post something that’s incorrect, I don’t have one editor, I have thousands,” said LGF’s Johnson.

Blogs that break news, offer the best links and provide keen analysis win more readers and higher status.

In the same way the market sifts and analyzes information stocks far better than any individual investor or institution ever could, the blogosphere weeds out the chaff and develops and hones analysis and facts at, well, Internet speed.

“It’s sort of an open-source intelligence gathering network that draws on the expertise from around the world,” said LGF’s Johnson.