The New York Observer’s Rebecca Dana writes about CNN’s “The Blog Report” segment and its hosts Abbi Tatton and Jacki Schechner…

“What we’re trying to do, and what CNN is doing with The Situation Room, is to recognize that there are lots of different places to get opinions, information, perspectives,” said Ms. Tatton. “We’re bringing in diverse elements to help the story along.”

…………………………………..

David Bohrman, CNN’s Washington bureau chief and creator of the segment, explained the purpose of an MSM outlet (that’s blogspeak for “mainstream media”) setting out to explore the blogosphere. The information that Ms. Tatton and Ms. Schechner find on blogs is important. But “filtering it and judging it and weighing it is complicated,” he said, “and that’s where the CNN DNA comes into play.”

MSM DNA?

“It’s sort of like Blogs 101,” said Mr. Bohrman. “Or the Reader’s Digest of blogs. Or Blogs for Dummies.”

But at the same time, it’s not. The Blog Chicks “treat the blogs and the Internet as a beat,” he added, “as something to cover.”

The idea first came to Mr. Bohrman last winter, when CNN president Jon Klein wanted to air bloggers’ opinions of President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address. The network invited Andrew Sullivan and Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox to comment after the speech. “They were good,” Mr. Bohrman said, but not what he had in mind. Having worked for a short time as the chief executive of Pseudo.com, an interactive news site, he came up with the current format, which he proposed to Mr. Klein.

Mr. Klein gave him a one-week trial period. Mr. Bohrman paired Ms. Tatton, a British-born CNN producer, with Ms. Schechner, whom he’d recruited from Pseudo. They did short segments during Inside Politics and were absorbed into The Situation Room when the show premiered last spring.