The Early Life of the Gas-Tax Story

The possible suspension of the federal gas tax has become a big issue in the presidential race, and the latest media frenzy surrounding the candidates. As we noted last week, the press aggressively (if belatedly) attacked the idea, which John McCain and Hillary Clinton support and Barack Obama opposes. But regardless of whether tax holiday amounts to political "pandering" on the one hand, or needed relief for struggling Americans on the other, one can look at the evolution of the gas-tax story as a vision of how the mainstream press can live symbiotically with the blogosphere. In fact, the evolution of this story turned the typical journalistic protocol-news first, opinion later-on its head. Attention to the gas-tax holiday began in the blogosphere, and then bled over into a print-media fury.
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_early_life_of_the_gastax_s.php