Bloggers are editors, not journalists

Some very interesting commentary at The Iraq War Reader on the role of bloggers in shaping news:
“In my humble opinion, bloggers who write about current events and culture (as opposed to people who are mainly focused on their inner world or their personal spheres) aren’t getting attention and adding value to the democratic discourse so much because they’re behaving like journalists, it’s because they’re behaving like editors. Not that many bloggers are generating fresh reporting on events, as journalists or reporters covering a news story would do. (Not that I’m against bloggers being reporters, or bloggers correcting bad reporting by unearthing contradictory information.) But what many good bloggers are doing is filtering the news for us, the way a good editor does. “