Romenesko links to this Boston.com piece about the Daily Kos kerfuffle and features this quote:

“This fight is saying `Welcome to the big leagues,’ ” said Richard Bradley , the former editor of George Magazine and a blogger himself. “If you want us to take you seriously, we’re going to ask you the same questions that we ask anyone else who aspires to be a power-player in Democratic politics.”

I say, “Welcome to the conversation.”

There are some in the blogosphere who want to criticize the MSM, but never have the MSM talk back or question the blogs. Some, as Markos “Kos” Moulitsas is being, are embarrassingly shrill in their attempts to stifle it. But more and more, journalists in the MSM are getting beyond the broad brush, “all bloggers are hacks” mentality and bringing real scrutiny to what bloggers do. This, I think, is a good thing. This is what conversation looks like.

The B.com piece concludes with:

“I would say the loss of innocence moment probably came before,” he said. “Look, when bloggers start getting hired as consultants at political campaigns and when Mark Warner spends $50,000 on a party for bloggers, the purity is already gone. That’s it, it’s over, it’s history. The second that happens, self-consciousness has arrived. And that image of bloggers sitting at home, pouring out the unadulterated truth, freed from impurities from the outside world, is lost.”

The blogosphere is not some lock-step entity that you can pigeon-hole with generalizations about loss of credibility — for the whole blogosphere. That’s old media thinking. The blogosphere is filled with individuals. Some bloggers are credible and some are, indeed, hacks. Some are honest and transparent. Some take money under the table. The fun part is, readers get to decide who is who — maybe with a little help from MSM.