Online Journalism Review’s Mark Glaser has a thoughtful piece on the impact election day is having on bloggers and their credibility. Glaser focuses on the early reporting of exit polls, which turned out to be inaccurate, but also notes that many blogs cracked under the strain of unprecedented traffic. Mainstream media, Glaser notes, wound up looking good by withholding exit poll information. That’s an interesting turn of events for mainstream media, whose credibility had driven many to the blog alternative.

Throughout the day, I had trouble getting to Wonkette, Instapundit and Daily Kos, and Josh Marshall’s Talkingpointsmemo.com blog was down for a number of hours in the afternoon on Election Day. The deluge of traffic for sites with and without exit polls show just how much political blogs are becoming part of media consumption for a big event like an election. However, it’s easier for a site like Slate, backed by Microsoft, to boost bandwidth than a small one-person blog operation.