The Columbia Journalism Review felt it necessary to attack blogs as news sources because of the New York Times’s piece today on Charlie Rangel’s rent-controlled apartments.

Here’s my response, submitted at the CJR site:

I’m not sure just how you decided that blogs don’t do journalism equal to the NY Time’s piece on Rangel.

Little Green Footballs discovered the TANG memo forgeries, and ended the career of Dan Rather.

Confederate Yankee was responsible for outing AP’s use of a fictitious police officer in Iraq as a source.

Blogs reported the Abu Ghraib scandal months before the Times.

My blog alone covered the unique and unprecedented generosity of the American people after the tsunami in South Asia.

It is blogs that are publishing the translated papers from Saddam’s regime. It is blogs that are covering the repression and violence in Yemen.

Blog content coverage of 9/11 was thought important enough that the Smithsonian added it to their collection.

Blogs will not replace good newspapers, only lazy ones.

Thanks to Jay Rosen on Twitter for the pointer.