Here's part of how this story got here . . . from a little Marc Ambinder back-lurking on the blogs . . .
At 8:00 pm ET Wednesday night, CBS News does the story . . .
at 8:59 ET -- before the broadcast is finished!!! -- the documents come into question via a poster named Buckhead on the Free Republic Web site: LINK
Buckhead seems well-read on his forensic document examination skills.
"Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old."
Well, this is bandied about by dozens of Freepers, as they're called and is picked up at 8:30 am ET and added to by www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ -- this little green football guy is a very popular conservative blogger . . .
It's expanded upon by www.powerlineblog.com/ in the early morning:
and also by www.spacetownusa.com/hmmm
and here, at 10:36 am ET: www.allahpundit.com/.
Around midday, the popular author Roger L. Simon praises the blogosphere for getting this story . . . LINK
Between this time and mid-day, reporters in the MSM -- that's the Main Stream Media to these folks (that's us) -- are alerted by some sources to the blogosphere's agita . . . others have read the blogs themselves.
At 2:41 pm ET, one blogger even consulted his own forensic expert and told anyone using the blog that, well, they must credit him: indcjournal.com/.
To Drudge, around 3:00 pm ET . . .
and the Weekly Standard . . . around 5:00 pm ET . . .
to Fox after 6:00 pm ET and then the AP and then ABC . . .