Our pal Jack Risko, of Dinocrat.com, makes a great point about the Time Magazine naming of Powerline as the blog of the year:

We're second to none in our admiration of Powerline, and heartily endorse its Blog of the Year award from TIME Magazine. Fantastic work, as we noted earlier.

That said, highlighting Rathergate as the issue on which the award turned is a kind of sleight of hand by the Old Media. The award could just as easily have gone to Glenn Reynolds for his outstanding work on the SwiftBoatVets story, serving as a clearinghouse for research on their charges, from Christmas in Cambodia to the Sampan Incident, from the Magic Hat to VC the Wonder Dog, and so many more — here's the list. Reynolds even did original research, including producing the picture below from the Congressional Record of 1986. Moreover, Instapundit was averaging over 3 million visits per week at that time, making it far and away the most popular blog. But recognizing Instapundit would have entailed the Old Media's covering a story they, to this day, do not want to touch.

As so often is the case, Jack looks beyond the obvious, and puts two and two together.

Thomas Lifson  12 20 04