I've seen a lot of commentary in Future-of-Journalism nerdland about this video, in which the P-D's so-called reader representative, who sounds in this clip a lot more like a management shill, discusses the fallout from Connie Schultz's batty column last week supporting a plan to curtail the First Amendment in order to try to save newspapers.

But I haven't seen anybody mention this whackjob of a rhetorical question by P-D reporter Rich Exner, probably because Exner and reader rep Ted Diadiun are so dull everyone's asleep by the eight-minute mark, when the two men are discussing blogs.

This is before Diadiun calls bloggers "a bunch of pipsqueaks," which I think is where most people wake up.

At around the seven-minute mark of the video, Diadiun starts talking about how the Plain Dealer and big papers like it are the largest newsgathering organizations in any region of the country. "Were it not for the newspaper newsrooms, there wouldn't be a lot of original reporting," he says. "There's not a lot of original reporting that happens out of blogs and the Internet news sites."

He admits, though, that there is a little original reporting in the blogosphere, mentioning specifically "the Dan Rather thing ... a couple of presidential campaigns ago, and that's certainly something that keeps everybody on their toes."

That's where Exner jumps in to challenge Diadiun, and by challenge I mean agree with, which really makes for an exciting interview. We can learn a lot about journalism from these newspaper boys. Here's the question:

"But even the Dan Rather thing, or some of the videos that showed up with one of the presidential candidates. OK, that might have originated at a blog, but when did the public really find out about it? Did they find out about it from the blog or did they find out about it when the newspapers and major networks and so forth repeated what the blogs had reported?"

Diadiun agrees: "And that's the point," he says.

Exactly! That's the point! Wait, what's the point?

The point is: When bloggers repeat what the newspapers have reported, it's a threat to the republic so profound that laws dialing back the First Amendment must be enacted. But when newspapers repeat what the bloggers have reported, it's proof that newspapers are so much more important than those pipsqueak bloggers.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of thinking that's put newspapers where they are today.