Dave Winer points out that Curt Schilling got to use his blog to refute a mainstream sports story, and links to ESPN coverage of it:

Curt Schilling: "So for one of the first times this blog serves one of the purposes I'd hoped it would if the need arose. The media hacked and spewed their way to a day or two of stories that had zero basis in truth. A story fabricated by the media, for the media. The best part was that instead of having to sit through a litany of interviews to 'defend' myself, or my teammates, I got to do that here."

How many times have reporters proclaimed blogs stupid, irrelevant or dead.

Now you know why. They're freaked out because their exclusive access to the minds of readers is in its waning days. Blogs are the reason why.

The next step is for publishers to realize that the monopoly is breaking, and to start doing deals with the sources.

Here's Schilling's blog. And feed.

And Dave only indirectly noted the most interesting thing about it (at least to me): despite quoting Schilling's response from his blog, ESPN refused to provide a link to that same blog in the story. ESPN found room to link to its own pages for Schilling, Doug Mirabelli, the Baltimore Orioles, and to 208 (as of this writing) posted comments - but not to any page for the Red Sox, the announcer Gary Thorne, the ALS foundation, or anything else mentioned in the story.

Talk Not only does Schilling correct the story by speaking directly to fans, ESPN.com is so afraid of the idea that they neither provide a link nor a name for Schilling's blog - nor to either of the two pages with distinct URLs that both contained the same wire service story about the controversy, with no indication that ESPN or AP asked Schilling for comment.

It's hard to imagine a story that could validate Dave's point more thoroughly.