Josh Marshall's Polk Award win was monumental for bloggers.
Marshall's win was thanks to his model of Talking Points Memo, and tells us why blogging is important for the following reasons:
1.) The idea of cooperation rather than competition and how important that has been for indy media bloggers for the past few years. For example, there was a Washington Post story about veteran mistreatment after returning home from war, but it wasn't mentioned in other big outlets for more than a week.
2.) Crowd-sourcing, distributive reporting. For Marshall and Talking Points Memo, "coverage of the U.S. attorney firings on TPM was propelled by tips from readers, some of them emailed to the bloggers and some posted as comments on TPM sites."
3.) Incremental blogging- when blogs dig up new tidbits they can report it, but bigger outlets don't utilize these as easily. The "nuggets are ideal for a blog, which is the perfect format for a steady flow of information 24/7, so to speak."
This win shows us how and why (in some cases) blogging is still solid journalism, and how sometimes, it's even better than what mainstream news is producing.
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