Dana Stevens, television critic for Slate, recently wrote about how television media chooses to cite blogs in their news coverage. I have yet to see the blog coverage on CNN or MSNBC, but it seems like they have the wrong approach to including this new medium.
We witness cross-media citations all the time. News organizations care about who broke the news and who had the best commentary and the best sources are usually cited multiple times on big stories. Newspapers or radio stations often break stories and CNN reports on these breaking stories just as they would their own original observations.
There’s interesting content out there, and blogs may break the story and provide interesting commentary. Television shows need to treat weblogs just as they would treat a newspaper or radio station: quote or excerpt the source in your own way.
Mainstream media is struggling to adjust and integrate with the world of grassroots media. It’s a bit sensationalized at the moment but I think once things settle down they will realize the more things change the more they stay the same.