Bloggers claim another scalp

That's the line on the NYTimes about Eason Jordan's resignation, which seems to be echoed by the WSJ.

I don't think most bloggers are in this for a power trip. If they were, they'd have gone into journalism. The real problem for the "fear and loathing" media crowd is that they've created a target-rich environment. For a person with the obvious bias of Eason Jordan to be given authority over a major source of news is inexcusable, even by the standards of journalistic ethics.

Predictably, the WSJ's editorial is not playing very well in the blogosphere. I believe that CNN has the right to hire Eason Jordan, regardless of his views, but the fact that he says things like this hurts the network with the public, and I think he and they could tell this wasn't going away, no matter how, or maybe because, his friends in the MSM have resisted covering the story. They need to look in the mirror and note how much they are mimicking the behavior of politicians like former Senator Bob Packwood and Bill Clinton. The truth is not that the bloggers "brought down" Eason Jordan, but that the concerted ignoring of the incident by Jordan's peers couldn't save him. This wasn't, as Austin Bay notes, a case of McCarthyism, because the bloggers didn't make this up. They covered it the way the MSM should have.

Tim Blair has the best take this, as well as a masterful fisking of the Times story:

�Rampant, unedited dialogue� [quoting Jeff Jarvis]�again, I refer you to Democratic Underground�has absolutely no effect unless it�s supported by evidence (for example, a faked-up National Guard memo or a bogus quote). How often have posters at DU called for the head of, say, Sean Hannity? Yet their rampant, unedited dialogue has had no impact at all.

All you have to do is read the coverage in the blogosphere to see that Jordan's critics make a good case for yanking him. The Times and WSJ didn't really do that. They gave us the "off-the-record" and "he corrected himself" riff.

As I say, a target rich environment.