Of course, the blog concept is more relevant to Chris than the "mainstream" population (He's the editor of Wired). But, this is an excellent point (courtesy of PSFK) which illustrates where things are headed.
Get on the train...or watch it go by.
Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Mag, writes about how, with the exception of the Sunday New York Times, he reads the press through the editorial of blogs. He monitors which press articles are being written about by bloggers and this helps his judgement on what to click through to and read in the mainstream media:
"If there's something relevant to my interests in the Wall Street Journal, the daily NYT or some other news site, I assume one of the blogs I read will point me to it. This is not to say that I don't value mainstream media; I do. It's just that I'd rather choose my own editor to select the articles of highest importance to me (including those the mainstream media choose not to cover at all, or just not well). In this case that "editor" is a network of bloggers, not whomever decides what makes it to the front page of the newspaper. This works so well that I suspect I'm actually reading more articles from mainstream media, and from a broader range of it, than ever before."
Anderson also provides a link to the 150 RSS Feeds he monitors each day. If you're dismissive of the power of blogs, think again.