Pajama-Clad Revolutionaries

Andrew Leigh wrote in NRO A year ago, Jonathan Klein, current president of CNN, airily dismissed the bloggers who dethroned Dan Rather. "These bloggers have no checks and balances... You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances [at 60 Minutes] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."

60 minutes with its multiple layers of checks and balances was wrong; the bloggers in their pajamas were right.

Of course, it wasn't so long ago (25 years, to be exact) that CNN was the new media outlet on the block. And the neighborhood kids turned their noses up at Ted Turner's brainchild. Broadcast newshound Sam Donaldson derided CNN as the "Chicken Noodle Network." Time, you see, not only heals all wounds.

It wounds all heals.

It heels all mavericks, making top dogs out of underdogs. The underdogs of our time, journalistically speaking, are bloggers. And the online unraveling of Rathergate was their first unmitigated triumph.

One of the bloggers who led the charge against Rather is Charles Johnson, proprietor of the curiously named Little Green Footballs. Shortly after this triumph, Johnson joined forces with another popular blogger, Roger L. Simon, to form (thumbing their noses at Klein and all other doubters) Pajamas Media.

I am proud to say that I am a member of Pajamas Media

Aside from blogging, Simon is a screenwriter and novelist, Johnson a session musician and computer-software entrepreneur. The business partners have spent the past several months lining up bloggers and investors to participate in their new venture. "Our intention is to create an aggregation of good blogs, quality-wise, to provide an alternative to the mainstream media," Simon tells NRO.