Editor and Publisher says it's a possible first for a major NYT story: The paper's website has linked to external bloggers' comments about its big scoop on the Bush adminstration allowing some domestic spying by the NSA without a warrant.

In that sense, the NYT is behind the Washington Post, which has been linking to blogger reaction for some time.

An excerpt from the E&P story:

The bloggers who get links at the Times today include conservatives Glenn Reynolds (“a major shift in U.S. surveillance policies”), Hindrocket of Powerline and Michelle Malkin (she denounces the “civil liberties Chicken Littles” at the paper), as well as a sampling of liberals.

The paper does not link to Matt Drudge, who today has been accusing the paper of only publishing the story now because co-author James Risen has a book on this general subject coming out soon.

It also does not link to Will Bunch, the award-winning Philadelphia Daily News reporter who writes the “Attytood” blog there. He charges that the Times likely had this shocking information before the November 2004 election, and if it had come out with it then it would have sunk Bush’s chances for re-election. He also mentions that this comes on top of Times’ reporter Judith Miller not coming forward in the Plame case last year, which allegedly also helped Bush win.

Referring to today’s story, Bunch writes: “We'd like to know a lot more about how this all transpired -- who talked to whom at the Times, and when did they talk? Did the pleading come before Nov. 2, 2004, or after? Was anyone on the White House political side -- i.e., Karl Rove --involved? You would think that after the Judy Miller fiasco, the Times would be much, much more transparent in the backstory of how this story was published. But you would think wrong….

“Simply put, the Bush White House gamed the media in 2004….Voters could have gone to the polls on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2004, knowing that Bush was spying on Americans, that a key White House aide was charged with felonies, and that the initial rationales for Iraq were bogus.”