New Media Strategies

Today's Washington Post features an article about what the newspaper calls the "New Media." It offers an intriguing analysis of the effect that blogs, talk radio, and new, openly-biased television and print media are having on the political process. Bill Clinton deplores it. Dick Cheney loves it. I think its info-tainment.

The Mark Foley fisasco encapsulates it all. Count all the new media involved in it: Foley is busted sending dirty emails and IM's to pages. ABC.com breaks the story. Most people first see the report on various blogs (well, at least I did). Bloggers like Matt Drudge keep the story going around the clock. Liberal bloggers start calling for the resignation of Republican leader Dennis Hastert. Hastert appears on Rush Limbaugh's show and other conservative radio programs to defend himself and decry the witch hunt led by all the liberal bloggers.

This, my friends, is our zeitgeist.