Mainstream news media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign is turning out to once again be the same dreary affair that it is every four years: The candidates manipulate the media. The media obliges and manipulates back. There are recurring story lines that bear only coincidental resemblance to what’s really going on. The focus is almost entirely on the horserace and rarely on the issues. And there is far too little introspection or self criticism.

There is one important difference this year — the thousand of blogs, ranging from a handful of widely-read biggies to little blogs like Kiko’s House, that will be all over the MSM’s campaign coverage like one big cheap suit.

You can bet your computer hard drive that these blogs will put heat on the MSM stalwarts when they get caught out, as CNN did in its crass manipulation of the questions that the Democratic candidates were spoon fed at its Las Vegas “debate” last week and the MSM as a whole did post-debate in peddling the ridiculous story line that Hillary Clinton had “rebounded” without explaining why the frontrunner and increasingly prohibitive favorite to win the nomination had to rebound in the first place.

Blogs will not have made a big difference in how the MSM covers the campaign by the time Election Day rolls around. Sure, they may leverage some story or another to the point where the MSM is forced to pay attention. But they at least will be a reminder for voters that they are being diddled. And that in the end they make up their minds about who they should vote for and not allow Lou Dobbs, David Broder or some other co-opted insider do it for them.

I know of what I speak. Beginning in 1972 with the Nixon-McGovern race and mercifully ending in 2000 with the Bush-Gore debacle, I was involved in covering eight president campaigns and was in charge of coverage of two campaigns for a major metropolitan daily newspaper.

There were three discernable trends over this 28-year slog.

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