In the political arena, anyway! The New York Times reports that bloggers offer a perspective on the ground, closer to the events that the mainstream media has a hard time replicating.

That the blog now has a firm place in the choreography of national events — and in elections perhaps more so than in any other cultural exercise — is a boon to the democratic process, said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance at Oxford University and a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

“In a lot of ways they’re helping to set the agenda for the mainstream media in fast-moving events like this,� Mr. Zittrain said. “They just need to be able to produce enough that’s credible quickly to give a lead.�

In the light of the crowdsourcing announcments of USA Today, I think it may be one more closer step in the evolution of the delivery of news, and represents the inclusion and validation of bloggers as a kind of “media”. CNN, for example, brought in a bunch of bloggers for a giant “blog party” last night covering the mid-term election in the States … which at times, felt like looking at an exhibition at the zoo (”Honey, don’t come too close — they might blog about you”). But many were given a chance to talk on the air as another ‘talking-head’ pundit, often times, with what seemed like equal footing as the other talking-heads.

In other news, political bloggers may also be better looking — which may have been the reason why they were invited to CNN. As reported in the NYT:

Constantine Stavropoulos, the owner of the cafe, said he had closed its doors for the “blog party,� which the network periodically broadcast and streamed online. He said he expected the bloggers — an attractive bunch, he said — to linger long after the votes were in.

“Bloggers look a lot better than I thought they would,� Mr. Stavropoulos said