I guess its somewhat validating to read that something that I’ve been blogging on ad nauseum (as in, even I am finding the amount of attention this is getting a bit nauseating) is getting traction in some very popular off – line media coverage, namely the USA Today.

This is pretty amazing, considering how the inciting event happened SIX days ago, and has been attempted to resolved since that time through a change in the Digg Algorithm.

We could talk about the laggardness of the off-line media to catch up with new media stories, but the thing I find most fascinating about this is how this story just won’t go away. For example, yesterday Bokardo picked up on this issue, an A-List blog if I have ever seen one and did the best blow-by-blow design-oriented analysis of the controversy. But it was five days after the fact (and they did a kind job of referencing one of my posts).

I think it does speak to a couple things:

1. Digg’s impact: Yes, we all knew Digg was onto something when Kevin Rose was featured on Businessweek — but quite frankly no one would care one whit about the controversy if something similar happened to a lesser web2.0 company. Flickr or even Wikipedia would have never gained as much coverage, I think.

2. The insatiable taste for controversy: Geeks might cast disdain and thumb their nose at fashion mags and fashion blogs for keeping up with who Jessica Simpson is or isn’t dating, geeks love controversy just as much. Apple vs. Microsoft. Linux vs. Microsoft. Playstation vs. Xbox (see a pattern here?). When one of their favourite sites are embroiled in it, its a topic no one can ignore.

3. Echo chamber, echo effects: With the blogosphere starving for news and things to talk about, anything that is ever reported on goes through the echo chamber; people report the news again, and again, and again with often very little else to substantial to contribute (I’m guilty of this too from time to time). They link to each other, and then some of it gets wrung through the social network machine where the effects get amplified a thousand fold. Magnification yet again if big-time bloggers get wind of it, and bring it to the attention of their own fan base. Amplification yet again.

4. The blogosphere’s impact: When stories reverb throughout the blogsphere, it drags in the attention of off-line media. I think this speaks to the evolving effect of blogging in the wider role of Journalism. A recent study confirmed my suspicions that very few ‘ordinary’ net users read blogs regularly, or even use RSS — but the effect of blogs and those at their helm continue to change and grow.

Its hard to imagine where all of this attention will go. Will Digg regard this as just more publicity for them — let it fall under the umbrella of “all publicity is good publicity”? Should we expect writeups in slower monthly periodicals next month? And what will the next wave of controversy be for Kevin Rose and his merry band of friends?

We’ll just have to wait and see.