When a distinguished author, one-time Chief of Staff to Brian Mulroney, and Globe and Mail columnist finds himself in the midst of a flamewar with a lowly “potty mouth” blogger, what does he do?
Why he does what any trained journalist and former Ambassador to Israel would do! He draws on his formidable academic credentials and experience to rally his loyal supporters.
Screenshot of comments thread:

Breaking news via Drudge – after nearly two weeks of blogosphere driven pressure to keep the story alive, CNN’s Eason Jordan has finally resigned;

CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amidst a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Early reaction from Powerline, who predicted on Feb.7th that “Eason Jordan is finished”;

I don’t know, of course, what tipped the balance, but I wonder whether it might have been this: Larry Kudlow’s interview with three influential Senators, George Allen, Jeffrey Sessions and Norm Coleman, all of whom knew about the story, in contrast with many “mainstream” reporters who have been asked about it in recent days, and were incensed by it. This detail may have been telling:

Senator Coleman was not ready to open up an investigation, but he indicated it was worth looking at.

Senator Coleman is, of course, the Chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Larry notes that these and other Senators had to get their awareness of the Jordan affair through blogs.

James Joyner has been compiling a list of blogger response.
update
Howard Kurtz finally writes the column he should have the first time round, though still highly sympathetic to his co-worker at CNN.

Day-after media coverage of Chretien’s testimony before Gomery;

“…golfballs …. took out golfballs … golfballs … signed golfballs … Clinton’s golfballs … Bush’s golfballs … law firm golfballs … golfballs… “

Now, I ask you – if a commercial artist in the middle of rural Saskatchewan can spot a an intentional ploy to divert media attention from the denial, the obfuscation, the excuse making that passed for testimony from Chretien at the Adscam inquiry, why did every media outlet in the country fall for it?
Legitimate reporting would have ignored the made-for-tv stunt. Competent editorial review would have discarded that portion for more relevant testimony. Intelligent journalists would have recognized that Chretien wasn’t playing Gomery – he was playing the media as fools. And today, they look like fools, fawning over his cleverness, his craftiness, his successful attempt to one-up Justice Gomery.
Not one of them – not a single one – stopped chuckling long enough to ask whether it’s a wise tactic to attempt to embarrass and humiliate the judge who will be ruling on your involvement in a $100 million theft of public funds – and who may yet have the last laugh.

As the blogosphere continues to hammer at MSM stonewalling over the the Eason Jordan – Davos story; Michelle Malkin has useful updates here and here. Most interesting tidbit – copy of an email to Mickey Kaus, from Howard Kurtz;

I have a story in tomorrow’s paper. Had you been kind enough to check earlier, I would have told you that I flagged it for The Post on the day that I was crashing on CBS naming Bob Schieffer as Rather’s temporary replacement and said we should pursue it. Two other Post reporters pursued it, spoke to Jordan and decided not to write anything based on the fact that what was actually said was in dispute. I had nothing to do with that decision. I’ve since picked it up, done additional reporting and filed my story.

That sort of calls out for a “harumph!” emoticon.
update – The “narrowly focused” Kurtz piece is now online. Captain Ed is profoundly unimpressed and wonders why Kurtz – who reads his blog – didn’t mention that Jordan’s words at Davos were part of a long-standing pattern of unsubstanciated accusations against the military.

It took Kurtz over a week to finally get around to publishing this article on Eason’s Fables. In that time, it appears that Kurtz did as little investigation as possible on Jordan. My readers and I found all of Jordan’s earlier commentary within 24 hours, and we only have very limited access to Nexis and full-time jobs doing other things than media analysis. Worse than that, all of this information has been repeatedly presented on my blog — in fact, it was all presented on my blog today, and we know Howard Kurtz read my blog sometime this afternoon. Why didn’t Kurtz ask about his remarks in Portugal from three months ago, or about his identical accusations against Israel two years ago? Why didn’t Kurtz press Jordan on the entire story? Only Kurtz can answer that, and I doubt he will have much more to say to anyone about Eason’s Fables from this point onward.

As Glenn Reynolds noted a few days ago,

A story in today’s Christian Science Monitor asks, “Are bloggers journalists?”
Perhaps we should start asking if journalists are journalists.

Indeed.