Patrick Lalley, the Argus Leader's assistant managing editor, acknowledges that the blogs had an impact on how his paper covered the Senate race. They certainly got under the skin of some of the paper's executives. Randell Beck, executive editor of the Argus Leader, called some of the bloggers work "crap" and said they represented an organized effort by conservatives to discredit his paper. In July, he explained to readers that "true believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. If Hitler were alive today, he'd have his own blog"...

The blogs and other alternative media outlets became the tail wagging the media dog. "Argus Leader reporters said the pressure from the blogs increased until a 'siege mentality' took over at the paper, according to one source. Complaints flooded the paper's office," National Journal's John Stanton reported.

The paper's readers also began to take notice of the range of coverage available on the blogs that mysteriously didn't show up in their local paper. "The Argus Leader often doesn't present the whole picture in its political coverage," Wendy Otheim, a teacher from Hartford, S.D., wrote the paper in October. "A multitude of blog sites make for interesting reading. Don't be held a captive audience to the Argus Leader." To its credit, the paper ran Ms. Otheim's letter.