Lydon was the host and creator of The Connection, a genuinely intelligent talk show on NPR. He’s interested in how blogging fits into the attempt to create a national conversation.

He tells about the best caller into the show. She took various names but settled on “Amber” and took on the most powerful articulate guests. “When she nailed Gore Vidal to the wall, I knew I wanted to meet her.” She turned out to be an illegal immigrant with insight and intelligence and passion. He told Dave Winer about this and Dave said “That’s the blogger.”

Christopher worked for the NY Times for ten years. For him, the fall of Raines is an epochal event. But Jayson Blair is just a tiny bit of the picture. The crisis is really due to the fact that “we’re not talking straight with one another.” And “the encroachment of electronic media.” And, fundamentally, a dissatisfaction with the conversation around Iraq: we were lied to.

“We could put together a 2 hour radio show tomorrow that’s just as interesting and knowledgeable as the NY Times.” “We are being induced to shake off the phony authority of the NY Times.”

But he also wants to complain about BlogWorld: Too techie. Too much quoting and not enough writing. Too rude. Too much hip shooting and ideological response. But it is genuinely open and free and democratic.

To Tony: “We’re talking about free individuals, not about mass commodities that can be packaged and sold.”

How do we aggregate that talent without sitting on it? “We’re in the process of designing a radio broadcast that draws significantly on blog smarts.” How to do it? How often? What time of day? How do you get people to listen? How to make it global?

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