The new age of `news'.

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Saturday, Feb. 26:

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Fittingly for someone who fancied himself a journalist, it was a question that brought Jeff Gannon's downfall. It was an obviously slanted question, tossed like a softball to President Bush at a recent news conference. Gannon, who billed himself as a reporter for two conservative Web sites, asked Bush how he could work with Senate Democratic leaders "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

You can almost hear the other reporters in the room muttering to themselves, Who is that guy? Soon afterward, Gannon was exposed on liberal blog sites as James Dale Guckert, a man with thin if nonexistent journalism credentials whose naked pictures had appeared on gay escort Web sites.

Gannon was admitted into the splashiest press fishbowl in the world _ the White House. Gannon …