Hot Air
There's a new "conservative Internet broadcast network" called Hot Air run by Michelle Malkin and some friends of hers.
In the about page, Malkin mentions Al Gore's Current TV — a bigger, better-funded project with a neat web site — and others as "liberal" competition. Sites like Current, Hot Air and even our humble little Georgia Podcast Network are interesting peeks into the future that I think raise a few interesting questions:
- Can — and should — sites like these supplant traditional broadcast media outlets? Or can — and should — they co-exist with traditional media as rich supplements that delve deeper into subjects than traditional media can?
- Is the future of news coverage going to be strictly partisan, as it already is in the UK and on Fox News? If so, will it eventually follow the Daily Show/Hunter S. Thompson-by-way-of-Faulkner model ("...that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism"). Is even striving for fairness and objectivity (which is rarely, if ever, achieved) worthwhile?
- If traditional media was supplanted, how will revenue models work for the distributed model of citizen media that emerges? Can there even be full-time professional journalists? Is there even a need for them if the networks cast a wide and diverse enough net?
- Will distributors of technology to view/listen to new broadcast media become the new gatekeepers, as Malkin seems to imply in the about page when she talks about iTunes and the Daily Show?
I guess this post is a little portentous and possibly bordering on banal, as these are not new questions for people who have been following what's been happening the past couple of years. But I wanted to accumulate some of the thoughts I've been having the past year or so.
h/t Buzz Brockway