JEFF JACOBY offers a very nice valedictory to Arthur Chrenkoff:

The success of the series, Chrenkoff told me, took him by surprise. ‘‘I couldn’t believe that no one had done it before,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m usually not a pioneer. … But there was obviously a niche there that needed filling.’’

That ‘‘niche’’ — a widespread interest in the things going right in Iraq — was obvious. So why didn’t Big Media fill it?

Why, indeed? Here’s more from StrategyPage:

Other bloggers, like Michael Yon, have been providing coverage not seen in the media. Some of the military commands are also reaching out to the blogosphere as well, bypassing the legacy media.

The silent majority these days not only is willing to speak out, it is gaining the means to do so via talk radio and the internet. And the vocal minority – particularly the legacy media – is finding out that their volume is not drowning out things that were ignored in past wars.

That matters.