The NY Times is doing a victory lap over the blogosphere today:

For the most part, the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours, according to a new computer analysis of news articles and commentary on the Web during the last three months of the 2008 presidential campaign.

The finding was one of several in a study that Internet experts say is the first time the Web has been used to track — and try to measure — the news cycle, the process by which information becomes news, competes for attention and fades.

This is laughable because the media is ahead of the blogs only in what they choose to cover.

For example, look at the recent quotes that came to light concerning Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren who endorsed mass sterilizations and forced abortions in a book he wrote in 1977. Those comments were discovered not by one reporter on a staff of hundreds on a large metropolitan newspaper. Those comments were discovered by a guy who runs a blog called Zombietime. And Holdren’s comments launched 4,000 blog posts over the next three days. But not one mainstream media organization has looked into these comments.

So on this story, the blogosphere is uhmm…three days ahead of the MSM. And counting.

The Ruth Vader Ginsburg story where she essentially said she thought Roe v. Wade would usher in a glorious new era of eugenics has prompted over 20,000 blog posts in the past week while not one mainstream media source has lifted an eyebrow.

So for the Times to pat itself on the back for being ahead of the blogosphere is so completely backwards. I’ll give the mainstream media some props. They lead in drumming up quotes from deadbeat Dad Levi Johnston psychoanalyzing his almost Mother-in-law. They exceed the blogosphere in locating and delivering people with tenuous connections with child molesting (alleged) pop stars. And car chases. We can’t forget car chases. My day wouldn’t be complete without listening to Sheperd Smith’s play by play of a 45 mph car chase down a California freeway.

So I guess I’ll just ask the Times a question as bluntly as I know how: If you’re so fast, why are you so dead?

Michelle Malkin has more on this story.