The great thing about TPM is that Josh has established a network of correspondents who scan the local news and pass the twitches forward to the TPM mothership. The US atty firings were covered locally, but the reporters/editors had no ready way of knowing that these were part of a pattern. TPM, at the center of a spiderweb of contacts, put the elements together, and its first stories were [link|http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/01/running_massacre.html|mocked] by the MSM courtiers there in Byzantium-on-the-Potomoc.
The only reason I maintain a flickering confidence that the Republic will not have decomposed entirely out of recognition in my lifetime is my hope that Rove and his co-enablers even down unto the most modest levels were not prepared for the rise of citizen journalism of the kind that TPM exemplifies.
cordially,
edit: arbitrary link