Need more eveidence on how blogs are influencing and changing traditional media?

Look no further than this item in today’s Washington Post:

In Push for Local Readers, Post Unleashes LoudounExtra.com

Sit back and watch the references to blogs and new media accumulate:

The Washington Post Co. today is launching LoudounExtra.com, an aggressive online push into hyperlocal journalism, combining traditional reporters and photographers with bloggers, videographers and extensive databases on schools, businesses and churches …

The effort highlights a problem of major newspapers in the Internet age: the need to balance national reporting with service to Web-savvy local readers …

Washingtonpost.com publisher Caroline Little said LoudounExtra.com takes a different approach to hyperlocal news. “I think that blogging is great, but blogging alone is not a be-all and end-all to drive traffic,” Little said. “Useful information and database information are very important.” …

The information will be searchable and deliverable on a number of platforms, meaning users will be able to download the site’s restaurant guide onto their iPods and use their cellphones to find restaurants open late at night.

Yes, this is not your father’s Washington Post anymore.

Defenders of print media against the onslaught of blogs frequently make this point: There would be no political or opinion-based blogs were it not for newspapers.  Blogs would have nothing to write about if they couldn’t get news or targets from newspapers.

Today’s Washington Post shows that the opposite might actually be true.

Check out these stories in Saturday’s Post:

• Editorial headline: “You’re Outta Here!  The NCAA expels a blogger from a baseball game”
• Sports headline: “Getting Blogged Down in the Details”
• Style story on Angelina Jolie in the new Daniel Pearl movie: “In the blogosphere, photos and video clips of Jolie as Pearl serve as a sort of racial Rorschach test”

Little doubt left where reporters are getting stories ideas and story content.

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell says “I’ll think about it” when challenged to start a blog.

That lack of certainty over a blog’s value is something only she can tackle.

But in today’s same Outlook section, we find more resolve — and tragic results — from Egyptian freedom blogger Wael Abbas:

I am an Egyptian blogger. And the Mubarak regime is out to get me and others like me.

It is engaged in an all-out campaign against those of us who use the Internet to report the truth about what is happening in Egypt. It is spreading rumors about us and targeting us for character assassination. Judges allied with the government have filed lawsuits against more than 50 bloggers, accusing them of blackmail and of defaming Egypt and demanding that their blogs be shut down. Meanwhile, security officials appear on television to claim that the bloggers are violating media and communications laws.

Is this the kind of regime you want your tax money to support?

That tale should influence Howell’s decision. At least if she starts a blog, she won’t be thrown in jail.

A stunning blog post by the Politico’s Ben Smith — who admits getting the John Edwards story wrong, beats himself up over it, then opens up the comments section to a public flogging. Many of the commenters say it’s a dark day for blogging journalism.  I’d respond that publicly debating and thrashing around the mistake shows Web 2.0  at its best.  Instant and quite public ombudsmanship.

Ben, you got the story wrong.  But you got the solution right.

Another victory for blogs today.  Significant citation in the Washington Post’s coverage of President Bush’s press conference focused on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

Political analysts and blogs have begun speculating about possible replacements and claimed that the White House had begun its own search.

“The reports are just flat false, period,” White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters earlier today.

More proof that politicians and media simply can’t ignore blogs anymore.

Check out the Washington Post’s front-pager on the fading democracy movement in Egypt.

Should make us all — both bloggers and civilians — love America a little bit more today.

Pardon the lengthy excerpt, but it’s worth it.

On May 12, 2006, Gamal Mubarak paid what Egypt’s ambassador called a private visit to Washington, where he joined Vice President Cheney at the White House. As those talks went on, Seif, the blogger, sat in prison. So did Wael Khalil, the activist who heard an anti-Mubarak slogan being shouted for the first time in 2001.

Before his arrest, Seif, always casually dressed, had helped design Kifaya’s Web site, 20 blogs for opposition colleagues and home pages for Kifaya candidates. Soon, in what emerged as the last gasp of a retreating movement, he helped organize protests in solidarity with two Egyptian judges who faced expulsion from the bench after they had called for judicial independence and criticized the parliamentary balloting. The security forces arrested hundreds of people, particularly after the Brotherhood joined the demonstrations. Seif was detained May 7, when 300 police moved on a few dozen protesters outside a courthouse.

They blindfolded him tied his arms behind his back and took him to a police station. Among the charges: insulting the president, illegal assembly and obstructing traffic, the latter offense difficult to define in a city whose streets are snarled in distilled anarchy. From there he was taken to prison, where his hair was cut, a gesture used to humiliate prisoners. For a day, he was in solitary.

“I knew they were turning ugly,” Khalil said. “It was clear they were holding us captive until the movement subsided.”

Khalil had been arrested earlier as he drank sugar-cane juice in front of the courthouse. He was released the same day as Seif, on June 22.

As his friends sat in prison, Wael Abbas, a 32-year-old goateed blogger, heard word that he was wanted, too.

He went home and removed hard disks from two desktop computers. He hurriedly stuffed them in a bag, along with his laptop and cameras, where he had saved two years of videotapes and photos. He went to a friend’s house for two days, then caught a first-class train to Alexandria, on the Mediterranean. “On first class, they’re not looking for suspects,” he explained. Once there, he sneaked into Internet cafes to post entries on his blog.

A week later, lawyers told him it was safe to return.

“That’s the life of a blogger in Egypt,” he said.

In a Washingtonpost.com chat yesterday, national political reporter Lois Romano said:

We are watching the blogs, and just this month The Post assigned a young reporter to cover Internet campaigning. There certainly is a new viciousness in the process often generated by the blogs. You need to know that we as reporters are not spared — if we write an article the liberals blogs do not like we will be inundated with nasty, vulgar e-mail — which has no impact on our coverage.

Oooooh, scary music.  Viciousness.  Nasty.  Vulgar.  We do all that?
Good gravy, we must be real meanies.  OK, let me say something vulgar toward the Post:  Shazbat!
The U.S. Department of Journalism must also think we’re lunatics.  Journalism Secretary David Broder recently wrote of “former Alaska senator Mike Gravel, a strident critic of almost everything and promoter of a folly — a national initiative process — that not even a deranged blogger could love.”

Now, I might be in denial about my deranged status, and I might be in denial that I promote a national initiative process, such as it is. But to be safe, I read Brother Broder’s piece while strapped to my chair after trying to fly over the cuckoo’s next.  I drooled the whole time.
So don’t worry, Washington Posties.  Your jobs are safe.  The worst harm we bloggers  could cause your pure profression is posting under the influence of acid — an acid tongue and acid keyboard.

C-SPAN just ran last night’s National Press Club event where Tony Snow turned the tables.  He grilled the White House press corps.  (The Examiner’s Yeas & Nays explains more here).

At one point Snow brought up blogs, and posed this question to the panel:

I am all for blogs.  People ought to be empowered.  We have got this new democratic age of the media.  It is amazing, you get this hateful stuff that comes flying around.  One of the most important takeaways, not only should you not believe your own press, you should not believe the opposition’s blog?

Check out the full video of the program at C-SPAN’s web site here.

Quite some bravado from Kos in today’s Washington Post article about liberal bloggers pounding on their new public enemy #1: Democratic Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher:

“Absolutely, we could take her out.”

And truth be told, they probably could pull it off.

But if you really want to see how important and compelling blogs are for democracy, go a few pages further into the Post.  From an op-ed by University of Chicago’s Raja Kamal and Cato Institute’s Tom Palmer:

A former college student, Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, is sitting in an Egyptian prison, awaiting sentencing tomorrow. His alleged “crime”: expressing his opinions on a blog. His mistake: having the courage to do so under his own name. … Whether or not we agree with the opinions that Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman expressed is not the issue. What matters is a principle: People should be free to express their opinions without fear of being imprisoned or killed. Blogging should not be a crime. 

What’s happening in Egypt seems a bit more compelling and critical for our blogging attention than the ability to influence a congressional district election here at home.

Not sure which you should read first:

Howard Kurtz making this observation today about John Edwards and his departed bloggers …

My sense is that candidates want the hipness infusion and netroots support that bloggers offer but would like to finesse being associated with online fire-breathers–in other words, they want it both ways. Edwards, as I’ve written, paid some bloggers to cover his announcement tour, and hired a TV crew to provide “behind-the-scenes” footage of the candidate. But the Edwards campaign has had almost nothing to say about this flap, often not returning calls or responding to e-mails.

… Or Stephanie Cutter, who was communications director for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004, writing this in today’s Politico:

Don’t let blogs drive your strategy. Blogs play an important role in the national political conversation, and their role continues to evolve over time. In 2004, they helped drive national story lines. In 2006, they held each party’s feet to the fire. The bottom line is that when the blogs agree, they drive a message faster than any other medium. When they don’t agree, they are an important gut check. They need to be talked with and listened to, but keep them in perspective; don’t get knocked off your message.

Seems to me that Kurtz nails it.  Since this is the 20th anniversary of Fatal Attraction, it might be time for political bloggers to quote Glenn Close’s character: “I’m not gonna be ignored.”