During today's Meet The Press Tim Russert, David Broder of WaPo, Ron Brownstein of Los Angeles Times, Roger Simon of U.S. News, and Chuck Todd of The Hotline/National Journal considered the role of blogs in the current election.

Still some old-school thinking here. Mr. Russert, for example, sums up blogs as "a cyber-bulletin board." Sure ... kind of the way a Sunday morning interview program is "a TV news show," but OK.

There's also this priceless comment:

MR. RUSSERT: Roger Simon, when I say troll, I think of you.

MR. SIMON: I am a blogger sort of. I mean, the difference between—look, a true blog is I woke up this morning, I decided to skip chem class, now I want to write about the last episode of "Friends." That's what blogs are. You know, it’s people talking to each other. My site is actually written columns. There’s a difference between writing and typing basically. Well, I mean, the theory between blogging is half correct. It’s everybody has an opinion and then the other half is: And everyone else wants to read about it. That’s not necessarily true. When I first put up the site, it got all these responses. I thought people wanted me to respond to them. They don't. They want to talk to each other. And that has been the power that Dean has tapped into.

MR. BRODER: No, but I think it's a tremendous tool, and it's part of what is the healthiest trend in our politics, which is going back to personal communication, away from the mass media—forgive me, NBC. But I think the healthiest thing that’s going on now is people talking to people, either through the Internet or, as we're seeing on the ground in Iowa, face-to-face communication.

You can read the entire transcript here. For those looking for Electoral Bonus Content, there's a much less interesting interview with Kerry up front.

Update: As Michele notes in the comments, the Roger Simon above is not our Roger Simon.

>MR. RUSSERT: Roger Simon, when I say troll, I think of you.< Well, Tim, that makes two of us.