There's an interesting case study up right now about what blogging does to journalism.

In simple terms, it reduces the distance. You're no longer a star. They're no longer the audience.

The example today is that of MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, who has been writing a blog (actually, a series of columns) for about a year now. When Peter Jennings died, Keith didn't think (like most careerists) "wow, now there's a job opening for me!" He was genuinely moved.

Then he looked for the hidden lesson -- smoking. Olbermann was once a smoker, and it gave him a tumor. Fortunately the tumor was benign. So he blogged about it. And given that the non-distancing becomes a habit to one who enters the blogosphere, he talked about it on his show as well.

Well, that was too much for his boss, Rich Kaplan. Kaplan, a smoker himself, went ballistic over Olbermann's lack of "objectivity" -- another word for distancing.

The Daily News offered this "scoop" from Kaplan, who started CNN's long slide into oblivion before taking on MSNBC (why couldn't he have gotten a job at Fox instead) :

"I don't care if you don't come to work tomorrow," Kaplan told Olbermann, according to my spies.

Personally, I don't care if Kaplan doesn't come to work tomorrow, or any other day for that matter. His attitude is the past.

Olbermann, the prosumer, is the future. And the ratings bear me out. If anyone over at ABC has a Clue, I got your Jennings replacement right here.