Yesterday I attended Fair Media Council's "Connections Day". I was one of the participants in the Blogging: The Power of Citizen Journalism panel.

I had a blast because I finally met Bob Cox, founder of the Media Bloggers Association and Steve Safran of Lost Remote. Bob is the patron saint of bloggers and Steve? Well, as you can see by his energy in this post, he's Bob's so-good-yet-evil twin.

As Steve points out, the debate was rather agitated and it went from, how can blogs be used by disseminate your message to the "we still own the media and you bloggers suck" debate. The three of us agreed we are in a transitional period at the moment, because the rules of engagement through reading and writing are changing.

Here's what I get from the discussions we had during the panel and afterwards:

Blogging, is not just a new media phenomenon. Blogging is not just a disruptive technology. Blogging, depending on its relation to the mainstream, can be used as a new kind of media : disruptive media.

Video became disruptive after the Rodney King case. Cell phones became disruptive during the Deaniac smartmobs of the 2003 primary race. Blogs, as used to break news of all kinds has established itself as disruptive media.

People who usually hate blogs, hate them because they've forced their companies to reasses the way they do business plans. Case in point? Time-Warner stupid bullying of yours truly after I wrote a piece on the fair use of the Hello! magazine cover that had Brangelina and their baby on it.

So I feel actually good that many people in the audience, especially those working at media companies understood that just because you have a blog it doesn't necessarily mean you are actually using the medium at it's full potential. Tactical blogging would be better conceived as what people refer to "the power of blogs".