On Tuesday, the editorial board paused to congratulate themselves, and posited that it was only newspaper reporters who could get a story like the new Burris revelations. In their piece titled "Burris scoops show how much newspapers matter," the board said it was because of competition between the Sun-Times and its archenemy, the Chicago Tribune, that the Burris story came out. 

"No army of bloggers, no TV or radio station, no nonprofit journalism collective, no foundation-supported task force of political and government reporters will ever do the job so well," the Sun-Times argued. 

But for all of the story's talk about the wonders of competition, there is no specific mention of how competition with the Tribune actually did drive the Sun-Times reporters to get to the story faster. 

The piece obliquely suggests that somehow, because the reporters were from the Sun-Times, they were inherently better suited to break this story - that being a newspaper reporter made them the best. Of course, there are plenty of good reporters at WBEZ, Chicago's public radio station, who are actively following the Burris story, and there's no doubt Chicago's television stations would have loved to break the Burris announcements. 

Making the statement "newspaper=best" just doesn't make sense. What we're learning in today's media environment is that it's the reporters themselves who matter the most. If reporters have the skills to break a story, they can do it on any platform they like and the story will spread. 

If the Sun-Times sounds especially defensive about the heralded competition between it and the Tribune, maybe that's because one of its own has publicly questioned the notion of intra-city competition. 

After resigning from the paper last August, sports columnist Jay Mariotti (the paper's most well-known personality) told the Tribune the future of journalism is on the Web. "I'm a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn't compete," he said. "Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high-stakes competition in Chicago are over." 

Of course, there is still competition in journalism, even in Chicago, and thanks to immediate posting online, scoops are measured in minutes, not days. (The New York Post scooped the New York Times by nine minutes on revelations why Caroline Kennedy wasn't named New York's senator.) 

When the Sun-Times editorial board isn't defending old-school newspaper competition, it rails against the notion that reporters are a dying breed who will be replaced by cheap bloggers scattered in home offices throughout the country. 

"And that kind of stuff -- unearthed by skilled reporters working beats day in and day out -- will never be dug up by bloggers in pajamas," the Sun-Times said. 

Old media loves to romanticize the "bloggers in pajamas" idea, even when the very phrase implies bloggers are lazy bums who can't get out of the house. After Joshua Micah Marshall of the blog Talking Points Memo won a prestigious Polk Award last year for his reporting on the firing of U.S. Attorneys, the New York Times labeled him a "blogger, sans pajamas." Obviously a "blogger" can be a "reporter," too, but old media establishments haven't quite gotten the message. 

A year after Marshall won his Polk award, legacy media showed just how far behind they still are. At his first press conference last week, President Barack Obama called on Sam Stein, the Washington reporter for the Huffington Post, the liberal political Web site. The media were all a twitter with the news afterward. The Washington Post's media correspondent Howard Kurtz said Obama made history "by calling on the first blogger at such a session." The New York Times correctly identified Stein as a reporter in its write-up, but added more gravitas to the occasion, saying Obama was "the first to call on Sam Stein, a reporter for The Huffington Post, whose Internet publication sprung to life during Mr. Obama's candidacy." 

Legacy newspapers might publish online, but their frame of mind is still squarely in the ink era. Let's get a few things straight: Bloggers can be reporters; it's no longer novel that a Web site or blogging site is breaking news; and Roland Burris is in a lot of trouble. 

That's not due to some long-heralded newspaper war in Chicago; it's because smart reporters kept their eyes open for a story. Good stories will always be around, no matter the medium. When the editorial board at the Chicago Sun-Times realizes it's not in competition with the Tribune for a story, but every person with a notepad and a publishing platform, it will stop applauding its reporting and get back to work.