The lines between traditional media, new media, and politics continue to blur. Bloggers are covering the MSM reporters testifying at the Scooter Libby trial. After the Edwards blogging dispute, bloggers thinking about careers in politics are now scanning their archives, wondering what hidden time bombs they may contain.

We’re on the cusp of something new, especially with a presidential campaign getting underway that will produce unprecedented amounts of online coverage and chatter. With the formerly clear dividing line between “media” and the rest of us rapidly disappearing.

Rick Perlstein has a piece in TNR Online in which he notes the rough treatment that Jay Carney received when he made some mistakes in a post on Time.com’s new political blog, Swampland. A swarm of commenters, many directed his way by Atrios, quickly pointed out the errors. Though they were right on the facts, Carney lashed back at them. The Swampland blog is interesting in part because you can see the journalists adjusting, at times awkwardly, to the demands of blogging. At the same time, you can see Ana Marie Cox, who was not so long ago firing off barnyard epithets at Wonkette, cover the Libby trial for Time.com.

As Perlstein and others note, the trial has laid out the symbiotic relationships between Washington’s establishment reporters and the administration officials who use them to transmit a given political “message.” Leaks are never going to go away – we need them to see how government works, or doesn’t. But the opportunistic, misleading leaking and credulous reportage that accompanied the Iraq war (including, at times, the Wilson sideshow) has gone a long way to discredit the old system.

The John Edwards/blogging thing takes place on another fuzzy frontier.

Just as reporters who blog can get swarmed by commenters, bloggers who join campaigns are fair game for the (often arbitrary) feeding frenzy. A campaign is about message, not speaking your mind. Now, campaigns have also become too rigid, drained of life and spontaneity, so a little blogging mojo can’t hurt. But any blogger who goes down that road – especially if the road keeps on going – has to be prepared to give up some degree of honesty and outspokenness in service to the candidate’s message. The ritualistic statements out of the Edwards campaign may be an encouraging sign for bloggers, inasumuch as these two weren’t fired. But it may also signal the ultimate dominance of spin.

Or take the case of Ryan Grim, a Politico reporter who used to work for the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-legalization group. He called the White House, seeking to get some questions answered. Instead of responding, officials turned around and accused him of having a conflict of interest. In a blurb accompanying the story, the Politico pointed out that his work history is not exactly a secret; it’s already on his bio. True enough. But who reads reporters’ bios?

As the MSM monolith slowly crumbles, there’s a lot of competition, more choices and perspectives, and they will continue to proliferate. But it’s all a bit confusing. Is so-and-so a “traditional reporter” reared on “objectivity”? (Is that good or bad?) If it’s a blogger we’re reading, what candidate did s/he affiliate with in the last election cycle?

Once, we had a pretty good idea of where journalistic authority emanated – from established institutions, founded long ago, with a tradition, a clear set of values. Today, those institutions are under siege. Their values are (sometimes) exposed as less pristine than we once thought. In a fragmenting, yet very interesting landscape, where does journalistic authority – the sense you’re getting the straight dope – come from now?