Drudge: BUSH CHEERS DECLINE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA, RISE OF ALTERNATIVE PRESS

UPDATE II: Michelle Malking reacts to Bush's comments about the blogsphere: "...for all the lip service being paid to the power of blogosphere, the White House has sure down a lousy job of monitoring it."

UPDATE: Looks like the blogsphere is talking about this one. Wizbang has a round up of links, and had this to say.

I'm glad to see that Bush and Rove understand the importance of the blogosphere in disseminating information; however, as Michelle Malkin notes, they need to do a much better job of monitoring reaction to their policies, particularly the ports deal.

Maybe President Bush could have avoided this headache.

I think the President has an impossible job--predict how everyone is going to react to every decision or lack of, right or wrong. It's a no-win situation for him, and what he is doing now--giving the deal more time--is good enough as far as I am concerned.

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Drudge reports on comments made by President Bush and his top advisers on the importance of blogs, and what the CBS memo scandal showed about mainstream media.

President Bush, for the first time, is hailing the rise of the alternative media and the decline of the mainstream media, which he now says “conspired” to harm him with forged documents.

“I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share,” Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book STRATEGERY. “It’s interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world.”

It's a whole new world, and the liberal media is no longer the gatekeeper.

This is what an email from Regnery Publishing said about "Strategery:"

Try as they might, the liberal media and far-left Democrats simply cannot beat President George W. Bush. Washington Times White House correspondent Bill Sammon shows that, despite the Left attacking President Bush on everything from Iraq to Supreme Court nominees to hurricanes, the president has applied his unique brand of "strategery" to vanquish John Kerry and embark on a breathtakingly audacious second-term agenda.

In Sammon's latest book, "Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media," he explains that while the rabid mainstream press has steadily imploded, President Bush has helped bring democratic elections to the Middle East, two outstanding new justices to the Supreme Court, continued economic growth at home, and a long string of successes in the war on terror.

With unprecedented access to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Karl Rove, Sammon reveals how the White House has ignored the liberal media and liberal Democrats, leaving them increasingly impotent and irrelevant.

Sounds like an interesting book. Drudge reports its at #5 in the Amazon.com lists. Also, on CitizenLink, Gary Schneeberger interviews journalist Bill Sammon, "in his first interview about his new book "Strategery," [he] explains why you can't talk about the Bush White House without talking about how much the mainstream media hates the man." Great piece.

"Big Stretch" or "Superstretch," that's what President Bush calls Bill Sammon. It's a nod to the reporter's 6-foot, 7-inch stature, but also a reflection of the affinity the Leader of the Free World has for a) bestowing silly nicknames and b) Bill Sammon himself.

The longtime chief White House correspondent for The Washington Times -- he recently departed for the rival and just-as-editorially-conservative Washington Examiner -- Sammon is author of the just-released "Strategery: How George W. Bush is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats and Confounding the Mainstream Media." It's his third book on the Bush presidency, following the New York Times best-sellers "Fighting Back" (2002) and "Misunderestimated" (2004).

"Strategery" picks up the story of Bush's time in office in the spring of '04, amid growing unrest over the war in Iraq and growing attacks from the left as Democrats move toward anointing John Kerry as their presidential candidate. It spans nearly two years and 334 pages. Sammon leverages his reporting skills and the president's fondness for him to offer fresh insight into incidents already memorialized in history books: the mainstream media's unceasing efforts to ruin Bush, including CBS' amateurish, imbalanced and ultimately untrue reporting of a story about whether the president fulfilled his National Guard service as a young man; how the Kerry campaign imploded over its decision to trumpet his Vietnam service as his chief qualification for office; and how Team Bush hit all the right notes in nominating John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court -- if you discount the ill-fated Harriet Miers interlude.