St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan wrote an article about a colleague this past week that has caught a lot of attention within the walls of the P-D not just because of how he eulogized our peer but for how he positioned his passing as a sign of the times in the newspaper business.

Journalism has experienced a universe of positives as a result of social media and the proliferation of Twitter, Facebook and other online sources as a suped-up vehicle for news. Accountability is on the rise. Scoops, while sometimes poached, are more often shared. Important stories reach broader audiences than ever. One corrosive negative, however, is the fact that professionally trained journalists and gifted, inventive bloggers often have the same platform as an agenda-spewing hack.

In short: All of our soap boxes are the same height now.

Heck, I recently saw a cable news network quoting Tweets using handles. We don’t even require people to sign their opinions anymore with a name. That’s a blank check for blowhards.

Ink used to bring a clear gravity to the truthfulness of the information. Pixels lack that same weight and often are like dandelion seeds floating through the Internet and looking for a place to land, take root and multiply. The level playing field has had an unfortunate effect. It should be a meritocracy. It’s not. Instead of driving readers to news sources that prove they can be trusted — the august newspapers, the nightly news, etc. — free-range bloggers have actually undermined the media, all of it, mainstream or otherwise. No one questions just the individual’s ethics or facts; rather they question the whole industry. In The New York Times article by David Carr linked above, the subject of an aggressive blogger’s attacks sums it perfectly:

“I view our case as a blow for the First Amendment,” said Mr. Padrick. “If defamatory speech is allowed just because it is on the Internet, it cheapens the value of journalism and makes it less worthy of protection.”

Cheapens is one verb. Weakens would be another. He’s hauntingly correct.

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