So, there’s this guy. His name is Tim Goeglein. He is a Special Assistant to the President. He writes crappy columns for some local paper.
Then there is this blogger – Nancy Nall. Almost by accident, she uncovers that Goeglein has been plagiarizing.
Then there’s a bigger blogger. They pick the story up (along with a few other people) and make a few calls. The guy fesses up.
Then the first blogger’s commenters, industrious readers that they are, hunt down other examples of plagiarism.
White House people start getting upset.
The newspaper that published the columns does some looking into Goeglein’s work and discovers that 20 out of his 38 columns are plagiarized.
Goeglein then steps down.
All inside of 24 hours.
This is a story made by the internet. At any other time in our history this sequence of events at this speed would have been impossible. In one day, one little blogger forced a major political player to resign and embarrassed the most powerful man in the world. That’s convergence culture, the petite press making a difference.
