Free Republic

The news business is in trouble. Readership and viewership are declining, public trust is plummeting, and advertisers are beginning to wonder whether they're getting their money's worth. This has led people to think about what blogger and tech journalist Doc Searls calls business models for "news without newspapers," an approach to reporting and disseminating news that doesn't depend on layers of editors for publication, and big ads from carmakers for funding. Nobody's sure just how to do that yet. That's likely to change, though. Already we're seeing a lot of reporting from non-journalists, where the "reporter" is just whoever happens...

THE LEFTISTS ARE WHINING again. In the ‘80s, they sniveled, "Why is talk radio right-wing?" In the ‘90s, they wept, "Why do conservatives rule the Internet?" Now a new version of the same old complaint has arisen: "Why are all the blog sites conservative?" The answer to all three questions is the same. Talk radio, webzines, list servers, message boards and now blog sites have one thing in common. They are interactive. They let people talk back. Consequently, it is physically impossible for new media to do what old media did – that is, to shove unpopular ideas down peoples’...