The blogs are abuzz this morning with the news that CNN has decided to allow unrestricted reuse of the televised New Hampshire presidential primary debates. It's the right thing to do for all sorts of reasons. Much of the commentary repeats the claim that CNN is releasing the video under a Creative Commons license, but the announcement makes no such claim, rather using the language "without restrictions."

If you haven't seen the absolutely splendid redesign of the New York Observer's website, you should go there right now. It's so good that it might just lift the Observer out of its position in the marginalia of New York City media.

The site is almost completely based on Drupal, the open-source CMS platform we're using for BlufftonToday.com, SavannahNow.com and community blogging/social networking installations at all the other Morris newspapers.

While sitting under yet another a CNN Airport Channel monitor the other day, I listened to Lou Dobbs on one of his rants against illegal immigrants, which surely everyone knows is code language for Mexicans. As I listened to him exploit xenophobia for ratings points and book sales, I thought about Hitler.

But I decided I would not cross the line drawn by Godwin's Law. Not going there.

I was stuck in an airport lounge Saturday morning, sitting in Lubbock, Texas, waiting for the fog to clear in Houston so I could go home. The TV was babbling away. It was CNN's airport channel. I have no idea what happened in Iraq, because CNN didn't see fit to tell me what was going on. I heard two things, repeated over and over: CNN is the most trusted name in journalism (promo, with booming voice and imposing music). And Alec Baldwin yelling at his daughter on the phone.

A couple of recent launches highlight just how much participation has become part of the mainstream.

The universe of "Amigos" officially expanded today with the announcement of an expanded relationship between Yahoo and a set of newspaper companies that has grown to 12 with the addition of McClatchy.

JD points out that blogging is 10 years old this month. Today I was on a webinar panel, organized by Brian Anderson of PR/Newswire, discussing blogging. There were something like 3,000 people registered to listen and ask questions. Holy cow. For several years the number of active blogs has doubled every six months. That growth has slowed, according to the Technorati folks, but no one should doubt this: The world has changed. There is a new global conversation under way. There's no going back.