R. Scott Rogers with some excellent points about typewriters.

Alert reader J.N. writes in: “Um . . . why not check with the postmaster – did PO Box 34567 exist then? Does it now?”

Good question! The blogosphere has been hung up on the technical aspects of these documents, but there are lots of factual aspects which can be checked by real reporters. Like this story, which claims

An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter “Buck” Staudt was honorably discharged March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with officers’ negative evaluations of the future president’s service was dated Aug. 18, 1973.

Here’s a chance for the old media to redeem itself.

UPDATE 11:48 a.m.: Another alert reader notes, “I was an admin troop in 1974-1978,  guess what–we in the military date letters and memos with ‘1 Aug 73′ not ’01 August 1973’.  I have been in the Air Force for 27 years and we don’t date single digits with zero’s or spell out the month.  Look a little closer at military writing instructions from that period.” More grist for the blogosphere.

What a pathetic defense CBS made tonight. Their critics are engaging the evidence at a level of forensic detail CBS just isn’t able to match—a disjunction only made greater by the different capacities of television and the Internet. But the prima facie shortcomings of CBS’s defense were elementary.

One, the only expert they trotted out was a signature expert, though the signature was not the focus of criticism. Worse yet, he spoke as much about his own feelings about working on the story as he did about the undisputed signature. Two, CBS established that Times New Roman font existed before 1973, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the likelihood of such a font and such kerning being found on a government typewriter in 1973—font and kerning that appear to match identically that of the default settings of Microsoft Word. Three, the superscript they showed as a contemporaneous example found in documents from Bush’s National Guard records was not raised above the other letters, as in the Killian memo, and it had an antique-y little underline, which the superscript in the Kilian memo did not.

Most troubling about this defense was, however, its general, theoretical character. So long as it was anywhere in a seemingly infinite realm of possibility that this document could have been created as reported, they felt no need to go any further to establish its authenticity. How about more on the source of the document?

I would forgive CBS everything if, during tonight’s broadcast, Dan Rather turned to the camera and deadpanned, “Yes, we at CBS News have been pwn3d.”

Courage.

Jim Romenesko isn’t the only watchdog journalist non-plussed by the story that CBS News may have been taken in by a hoax. Go to CJR’s Campaign Desk and you’ll see nary a mention of the biggest journalism story of the year. Get this: Yesterday Campaign Desk published a post called Blog Report which was a roundup of the blogs–and they still didn’t mention it.

You’ll recall that Campaign Desk also declined to mention last week’s AP no-boo story at all.

From Slate: “Game guides are, in essence, travel literature.”

Now that’s my kind of rationalization!

I’ve never met him, but I’m sure Jim Romenesko is a wonderful guy, a great human being, and a swell dude all-around. But go over to his media news site right now.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Okay, did you see his coverage of the 60 Minutes story? You missed it? It’s there. Go look again.

(Fine you cheater, it’s in the skinny left-hand column, beneath the “fold.”)

So this is how America’s foremost journalism website covers the biggest story in journalism since Jayson Blair. (And it cuts both ways–if it’s a forgery, CBS News should be devastated; if the documents are legit, we have a prime example of a peril of the blogosphere: Hello, triumphalism!)

So let’s put it to the floor: Is Romenesko a journalistic idiot, or an ideological hack?

PS:What’s the Poynter motto? “Everything you need to be a better journalist”!

Totally off topic, but watching Tom Brady dismantle the Colts last night added further evidence for my pet theory: that we are living in a golden age of quarterbacks. There are a half-dozen sure-fire Hall of Fame quarterbacks working right now and all but one of them (Favre) are just entering their prime years. Brady seems like the obvious Joe Montana of the group–precise, rock-steady, brilliant under pressure. And Donovan McNabb resembles Montana’s biggest rival–John Elway. He’s big, mobile, has a rocket arm, and is a great leader.

Philadelphia fans should take comfort in this analogy, because if you remember, Elway didn’t become ELWAY until late in his career when he won his two Super Bowls. It was only then that he moved past Montana on many people’s all-time lists. So while Brady seems like the best QB in the NFL right now, I have a feeling that when all’s said and done, McNabb will be regarded as the better player.

Or at least, that’s what we Philadelphia fans will be telling ourselves this winter after the Eagles lose their fourth consecutive NFC championship game.