Is the New York City cocktail party circuit is a leading indicator of media-industry influence? If so, this week's calendar suggests that once-scruffy and disreputable bloggers are networking their way to mainstream power. On Monday, a well-lubricated launch party at the 21 Club for DealBreaker.com, a Wall Street gossip blog, managed to haul in the likes of television host Charlie Rose, Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff, and a gaggle of investment bankers. Gawker Media founder Nick Denton arrived with his photographer to cover the affair.

On Thursday it was Denton who played host in his SoHo loft (downstairs from Miramax cofounder Harvey Weinstein), to welcome Michael Jackson to the Internet fold. Jackson -- the recently named president of programming for Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, not the controversial pop star -- summarized the current NYC zeitgeist by saying he'd made the leap from producing TV series like Battlestar Galactica to join Diller online because television had become a stagnant, "homogeneous" business.

Among others nodding in approval were the Zelig-like Jason Calacanis, fresh from his relaunch of Netscape.com as well as a beaming Arianna Huffington, the activist turned political blog operator.

A Treo-toting, sleep-deprived Blaise Zerega, Managing Editor of the yet-to-be-launched Conde Nast Portfolio magazine was also in the room, fresh from posting the first original content to the nascent www.cnportfolio.com: a long interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt in which the CEO laments declining professionalism in media.