I love how taken aback the “old school” newsgathering operations are that blogs scooped them, and in many cases surpassed them, in covering the South Asian earthquake and tsunami catastrophe. The best quote I’ve heard in this regard was today on NPR: a “technology contributor” named Xeni Jardin said, breathlessly, that bloggers aren’t just “fat blowhards sitting on couches in the suburbs writing about what they saw on the news” anymore.

Note [1.7.05] …… In the comments, bentley points out that Xeni Jardin is actually a contributor to boingboing, which is a fantastic blog (this being a perfect example why). I have to eat some crow and revise my reflexive sarcasm above in the light of this fact, which I didn’t know beforehand. It must be that Ms. Jardin was engaging in some sarcasm herself on NPR, although it was kind of hard to discern that over the airwaves. Anyway, my belated apologies.