Salam Pax and the power of blogging

Baghdad blogger Salam Pax has been hired by The Guardian to write a column for the newspaper, in yet another example of bloggers getting hired by mainstream media. Another blogger who was hired by a media organization, Glenn Reynolds, writes in his Weblog for MSNBC.com that, “Salam’s fame isn’t really the point, except to illustrate that there is an audience for firsthand reporting. And it indicates the power of blogging: While Saddam was putting out one message, Salam was putting out another….it demonstrated the power of Internet journalism via Weblog in a very clear way.” And Reynolds points to several other bloggers’ interesting suggestion that Iraq is to be free it needs a free press — and that Weblogs are an easy and effective way to get a free press going.