The Media Civil War

Part of it is the old shrinking water hole problem. Some people actually fear that advertising is disappearing, that it will soon cease to exist. That's how scarce advertisers are on the ground these days.

The evidence is all around them. Newspapers have disappeared from many cities and will disappear from many more. Magazines have gone under without telling anyone. Even giant TV companies are fading fast. 

One place to watch the fun is at CNBC. Right-wing talent has become increasingly strident. At the same time management has brought in Obama supporters like Dr. Howard Dean to add balance. This is supposed to be a business channel but it has become more like a non-stop Crossfire show from the 1990s. 

What this is providing is opportunity. Advertisers who step up to the plate now can get enormous concessions from any media property they talk with. Entrepreneurs who launch now can get traffic, attention, and positioning for the next recovery — which will happen.

Question is, what do you invest in?

Wheeler is the Bob Woodward of our time, but she was not "discovered" by a newspaper or TV channel as her predecessors had been since the time of Nellie Bly. 

Wheeler emerged organically, from within the blogosphere. A Dean volunteer in 2004, she "made her bones" as a journalist through her live coverage of the Scooter Libby Trial. Her latest "scoop" is a biggie, the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month. 

Wheeler's rise is based  a mix of politics, business and technology. CMS systems like Scoop and Drupal made her rise possible, allowing a blogger to scale the audience. Entrepreneurs like Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos are supplying the institutional support needed for her to break through into the mainstream. 

But don't underestimate the role of politics. The reason TeeVee talking heads are angrily shouting "move on" from the Bush Torture Regime (even the so-called "liberals" like Roland Martin and Jonathan Alter) is that they are complicit. Conservatives like Peggy Noonan are more complicit, but many liberals were stampeded like the establishment journalists of the McCarthy period. But history shows it was those who were blacklisted, who defied McCarthy, who became stars later. 

In sites like The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, DailyKos and Firedoglake we have the opportunity to build a business model based on something other than begging, and Josh Marshall shows everyone else the way to go. TalkingPointsMemo has developed its business model to the point where it could hire real journalists, like Matt Cooper (above), who was knee-deep in the Valerie Plame scandal but was able to extricate himself by moving to the blogosphere when conventional work dried up. 

Mainstream journalism covers up the crimes of its editors and publishers by making the reporters who did the  dirty work disappear. Judith Miller has disappeared. Thanks to the blogosphere Cooper did not disappear. This is an important turning point in the history of journalism. Blogging has grown up.

Remember the three key elements in journalism success:

1. A Cause — Every great new journal is a cause. New York Magazine was a cause. The New York Times emerged before the Civil War as a cause. This brings with it the loyalty of a community.
2. Good work — This is what people like Marcy Wheeler bring to the blogs they work for.  Good work grows the community and gives publishers something to organize. TV organized around the cities stations were licensed to serve. Online publishers can organize around interests or, as in this case, politics.
3. A Business Model —  Growing a business model that is acceptable to the community but growing and profitable is what journalism is really all about. Journalists are taught in school that they are the heart of the business. This is a lie. Publishers are.

I have been privileged these last four years to work with ZDNet as they developed a business model that works for  online blogs about technology. This is not something a "service" like Google or Blogads can do for you. It's something publishers must do for themselves. Once they do this, however, success comes on many levels.

The Media Civil War is happening on all these levels — the cause, the work, and the business model. The Talking Heads who were discredited by the Bush Torture Regime will continue to bleat, and some bloggers (like Digby) will continue to believe they matter. They don't. Not in the long run.

And in the online world the long run is closer than you think. We will know the lesson is learned when someone pays Digby $1 million (plus a lucrative employment contract) to buy Hullaballoo, and she accepts it. 

P.S. On the general issue of torture and complicity, what Krugman said.