This afternoon at the CNN World Report Conference, a panel called "Blogging: The Fifth Estate" is discussing how weblogs are affecting journalism.

> 3:54pm: I inadvertently became part of the discussion as I demonstrated how to blog...

> 3:02pm: In five years, Powerline won't be a blog, Hinderaker predicts. "I think there are a lot of people right now looking for better ways to" present information online, he says.

> 2:47pm: Blogs "make the sausage factory into a glass-walled sausage factory," Allbittron says.

> 2:31pm: Allbittron: "It's a tool that is very easy to use. I use a blog for the same reason that I use a laptop and not a portable typewriter: It's the best tool for the job."

> 2:28pm: Mackinnon: "It used to be that if you were an American wanting to know what an Iraqi thought, you had to wait for CNN to give you a sound bite or the New York Times to give you a quote. You don't have to wait for that anymore..."

Read the rest of the live-blogging after the jump...


> 2:25pm: New panelists: Rebecca Mackinnon, Christopher Allbittron of Iraq 3.0 and Howard Kaushansky, president of Umbia Communications.

> 2:21pm: Nolan: The barrier to entry is not technological: "The barrier to entry now is finding an audience and keeping an audience."

> 2:14pm: "Do we take blogs too seriously?," Holmes asked. Yes, Nolan said: "There are 10 million blogs out there. Not all of them are great intellectual endeavors. Not all are done by people who care about fairness and accuracy...Many people like me are using this tool to do journalism on the Web. This is one the few occasions where you really can separate the medium and the message."

2:12pm: Aravosis: "We do this as a hobby. We do it because we want to contribute to the public debate, and if we're not accurate, we're not contributing much."

> 2:11pm: Holmes seems skeptical about blogging...

> 2:10pm: On the panel: "Buckhead" Harry MacDougald, Powerline's John Hinderaker, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis and "Politics From Left To Right" editor Chris Nolan.

> 2:05pm: "It can change the way people are looking at news," Holmes says.

> 2:04pm: Michael Holmes is moderating. His introduction: "You can be doing it from anywhere -- you can be sitting here right now -- and type your thoughts about what I'm saying...And within seconds it's on the Internet.