Lloyd Carr Retires, but then again We Knew He Would a Week Ago

Lloyd Carr announced his retirement today during a 10am Press Conference during which he was expected to.

As passed along here last Monday, the first reports of this impending announcement came not from a Detroit, Ann-Arbor, or University of Michigan newspaper or television station but from a Michigan fan blog called MGoBlog.com.

How this report was treated is an interesting study in journalism in 2007 and beyond.

The New York Times and close friend of mine Pete Thamel credited MGoBlog but not without taking a pot shot at the blogs other more fan-oriented content.

ESPN treated the report as a rumor and never mentioned MGoBlog in any of the speculative stories it ran last week, that I had read at least and on Saturday when it became more apparent that Monday was going to be the announcement that Carr was retiring ran the following sentence on its ticker "Lloyd Carr expected to announce retirement Monday, ESPN.com has learned".

My question is since MGoBlog's information turned out to be dead on, shouldn't it have been credited as the source of these reports? Or does news have to come from Institutionalized (what is "Mainstream" nowadays?) Media in order to be credited?

I have a feeling in journalism schools all over the country, students are being told that blogs are a fad and will be obsolete in three years and that the access they are paying $100,000 and taking classes for four years for will be theirs and theirs alone once they graduate, but in today's media climate, is that necessarily the truth? Or is the truth that news told from outside Institutionalized Media will be treated as conjecture until someone inside Institutionalized Media reports it as fact?

I have no doubt Lloyd Carr's retirement will not be the last major sports story to be broken by someone in the "blogosphere", I do wonder when that person will first get credit.