The Mapes Awards will not be the sole journalistic dishonor that Rathergate.com will dish out at the end of the year. New in 2005 will be the Coleman Awards, which will be awarded to MSM journalists who curse those jerk bloggers who keep fact-checking their asses.

The award is named after Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick “My Daddy is a Politician!” Coleman, who I consider the patron saint of the “damn those bloggers” movement. He used his column to attack Powerline, which won Time magazine’s “Blog of the Year” 2004. From misleading readers into thinking that Powerline’s authors are paid to blog to writing that their nicknames insinuate that they have tiny genitals, Coleman’s temper tantrum did to the Strib what “Dewey Defeats Truman” did for the Chicago Tribune.

(I’d link to Coleman’s article, but it no longer exists at the Strib’s site. Hope this is a sign of things to come. So as a compromise, I link to Iowa Hawk’s copy of Coleman’s little-known first draft of the column.)

The Colemans will be awarded to the most outrageous anti-blog temper tantrum from an MSM big-wig. And although we are only two months into the new year, the competition is fierce, courtesy of Eason Jordan’s resignation. Here is a collection of the entries thus far:

MSNBC’s Mike Moran has distinguished himself with two quotes from the same article:

“Jordan’s resignation made his head the latest to be mounted on the wall of a nastiest subset of the “Blogosphere:” those who think the Internet’s self-publishing technology (and free-wheeling definition of “fairness”) has anointed them as the Taliban of the American media.”

“Was it wise for CNN to provide the enemies of free expression, critical thinking and the First Amendment with a victory on this count?”

Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair:

“At some point in the ’50s Truman Capote was asked about Jack Kerouac, and he said, ‘That’s not writing, that’s typing,’ which is to some degree how I feel about blogs. I even hate saying the word blog. I hate being forced to say the word blog. When I look at that particular blog piece of software I react viscerally. I said, ‘Oh, I don’t want this. I don’t want to be part of this.’… By all rights, 18 months from now we should be looking back at this and all kind of embarrassed to say the word blog – I hope.”

The merry enablers of Columbia Journalism Review are also going full-bore at a Coleman this year:

“The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail.” –Steve Lovelady, CJR on-line editor

“Bloggers have claimed the attack on CBS News as their Boston Tea Party, a triumph of the democratic rabble over the lazy elites of the MSM (that’s mainstream media to you). But on close examination the scene looks less like a victory for democracy than a case of mob rule.” — writer Corey Pein

David Shaw, Los Angeles Times:

“Unfortunately, when these bloggers rise up in arms, grown men weep — and news executives cave in. That’s much more alarming than anything Jordan said.”

Bill Keller, New York Times Executive Editor (quoted in the Columbia Spectator):

“A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.”

Ted Rall, columnist and cartoonist:

“Borg-like, the various right-wing blogs simultaneously discuss the same stories, applying identical rhetoric. They create blacklists and urge their readers and fellow bloggers to threaten and harass their targets. Surfing this cheesy world of flag-draped neo-McCarthyite HTML makes it impossible to deny Columbia Journalism Review writer Steve Lovelady’s conclusion that most are “salivating morons” who form an ideological “lynch mob.” Worse, many of the right-wing bloggers are flat-out liars.”

These are just what I’ve come across. Surely there are more. That’s where I need your help. If you see a MSM journalist foam at the mouth over blogs and the new era of media fairness, send it to me, along with a link to the site.