NYT Or Daily Kos Circa 2005?

I don't read many dead-tree newspapers cover to cover anymore; I prefer to filter them online and read selected stories. But I got a New York Times at my hotel this morning and decided to give it a whirl. It's pretty amazing, the degree to which stories that bubbled up through online media sources take so long to get covered in the dead-tree media.

In the news section there was a story on Purity Balls, this deeply creepy ritual of evangelical fathers and their daughters going to a prom together and the girls renewing their vow of celibacy until marriage in front of their dads. It's worth covering, but to me it was a two year-old story, because bloggers like Echidne of the Snakes had been posting about it since then.

Then, on the editorial page, there was an op-ed about net neutrality, praising the value of a network-neutral Internet and the need for legislation to codify it. Which is great, and I for one am glad to have the Times on board, but this is an issue that has been pounded home by the netroots and online organizations like Save the Internet for years.

It's just weird to me, the whole lag time thing. The netroots is often just an expression of what informed citizens are talking about and finding interesting. Catch up, journalists!

UPDATE: Not to mention that Bill Kristol's column today has a huge factual error in it that it took blogs all of a couple minutes to uncover, despite the fact that newspapers have, you know, editors and stuff.

To support his argument, Kristol pointed to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) 41-point loss in the West Virginia primary:

"On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary — by 41 points. I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin."

Apparently Kristol didn’t look hard enough. Writing at Room Eight, New York political consultant Jerry Skurnik says it took him “all of 2 minutes to find what Kristol couldn’t find.” On Feb. 5, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat presumptive GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by 85 points in the Utah primary... In fact, on the same day, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee beat McCain by the same margin Kristol touted as unprecedented — 41 points — in the Arkansas primary. As did Mitt Romney in the Colorado caucus.