What's the News?

Currently on the Bloglines top list, links related to Stephen Colbert's roasting of President Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner fall into the following spots: #2, #3, #12, #14, #16, #18, #19, #20, #23, #25, #28, #34, #37, #41, #37, #46, #47 and more. The Net is all abuzz about it.

Yet, if you search Google News for Stephen Colbert, you'll find mainstream media coverage of Colbert's monologue hard to find, even though plenty has been said of the celebrity impersonator accompanying Bush at the dinner (arguably less noteworthy in light of Colbert's intensity).

Perhaps the lack of reporting is due to the fact that Colbert skewered the mainstream media as well, but whatever the reason, there seems to be a rather stark constrast here between news as determined by the mainstream media and news as determined by the Net. I'm very interested in seeing how these dynamics will play out in the future.

Note: The nearly nonexistent coverage of Colbert also seems to be a poor test of the theory of "The Liberal Media." While Colbert is the man of the hour on blogs run by self-professed liberals, he's conspicuously ignored by the allegedly liberal media.

Update (5/3) : At Salon, Joan Walsh discusses the MSM's silence in Making Colbert go away.