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Dan Rather's remarkable imitation of Wile E. Coyote gripping dynamite with a burning fuse could be a good thing for our country. I'd be happier if my livelihood weren't in his blast zone ..

By recklessness and its absurd defense - claiming the documents were "fake but true" - CBS squandered credibility banked by all journalists. I make my living at a newspaper that makes money by being credible. I don't expect readers will confuse our news offerings with Rather's storytelling. But it is reasonable to fear that, by some margin, readers' trust in what all journalists say and opine will be reduced.

Rather's credibility .. was based partly on the long preparation and diligence that got him his job, and in part on the fact that most mainstream journalism faces at least one editor, and usually more, before publication. Rather's betrayal tarnishes all of us who gain credibility in these traditional ways ..

It is bad enough when people assume the press routinely errs on trivia; it is fatal when they assume we bear malice in grave matters. They do assume it. It is a near-universal assumption among my non-journalist friends and my relatives that I work in a Jurassic Park of [leftists], surrounded by McGovernosauruses. Not exactly true. A few people are apolitical; there's a surprising number of quiet conservatives. But the profession has long drawn many [leftists] and their perspectives. The cure, I'd tell my ranting relatives, is to recruit conservative journalists.

Well, they've shown up - online. The Washington Post offered splendid coverage of Rather's distress, but the dissection began, famously, on the Internet. And it was through Weblogs' compilations of bits of reporting from this professional source or another - in a newsroom, we call this "news editing" - that the story gained momentum, stoked by Web-available commentary. Take Power Line, for instance. It compiled mainstream media reports as they broke, and it broke a few itself - one of its readers dug up the key anachronism about an officer's retirement date, notes John Hinderaker, one of the men running the site.

There have always been thousands of scattered people, each with bits of truth, as Hinderaker sees it. The Internet lets them bypass the unreliable filters of the old media and connect.

The Rather disaster has revealed the outlines of this new body of newspeople. This attention may draw in more volunteers to dig, to comment, to watchdog the professionals. So, fertilized by CBS' offering, do-it-yourself journalism blooms. If you like free speech, it's good to have more of it.

Some is dubious, purveyed by the unqualified, scantily edited, scandalously written. The mainstream media are not innocent of these faults, however. The Internet, by opening the field to people who don't happen to own a press, at least broadens the choice of voices. That's what propelled Power Line's Hinderaker and his Web partner, Scott Johnson. They're Minneapolis attorneys - though Hinderaker jokes online that he really lives in Milwaukee, thanks to business travel - who had written some punditry for magazines such as National Review. Hinderaker said the Web offered a quicker, easier outlet for their comments on the news.

Behind this gush of news commentary is the assumption that public affairs are important. "We're not doing this for our own amusement," Hinderaker told me on Wednesday. It's that he feels the news is that critical. That attitude, at least, should be a balm to people in the news business. We need it. It's hard enough to see an institution we love lose readers and influence. Now Rather, star journalist, looks like a Democratic Party dupe. It's good, then, to see more people who still think news is something worth doing.