They just don't get it. There's nothing like a bunch of Beltway gatekeepers navel-gazing and completely missing the larger message of the rise of the new media.

Matthews looks at the influence the "new media" has had on politics and where that begins and ends for the Beltway bubbleheads: Drudge. But it's telling how they characterize it: suddenly, DC was turned upside down by the publication on a blog known for sensationalist headlines the rumor that Pres. Clinton was having an affair with a staffer. A rumor that none of the traditional media was ready to touch, because it had not been vetted.

And that's the influence of new media--no filters, no responsibility. Listen as Dan Rather trepidaciously brings up the lynch mob mentality that can be fostered by the new media, where they en masse call out reporters or producers, sending letters to the editors and changing the narrative of a story, irrespective of the truth. And neither Tweety nor Politico's John Harris (who will never be honest about his hard-on for links on Drudge) hear the warning in Rather's morality play.

And so it goes. Even if Katty Kay gushes about the great democratizing effect of the internet tearing down the gatekeepers, the corporate media ignores the true meaning of the rise of the new media: the traditional media stopped doing their job--they stopped vetting stories in the rush to scoop their competition. They stopped practicing journalism. Period. Full stop. And I say this, recognizing my own small cog in the new media machinery. The rise of the new media caused the traditional, corporate media to act like bloggers.

I'm not a journalist, and have never laid claim to being one. I strive to get things accurate, and I try to keep myself intellectually honest about how I cover the stories I do here. But I have never hidden that I come to the posts I do with a bias and an opinion. It's there and you can disagree with me, but what I'm giving you is my slant on stories.

And that's what journalism has sadly morphed into since those days of salacious Drudge headlines about Monica Lewinsky. But they're dishonest enough to deny what I've admitted: they're doing nothing but giving you a slanted story. And half the time, they're simply aping the slant of the source from which they got the story: be it Drudge, or Malkin, or Erickson. I wish I could tell you it's from Amato or Kos or Greenwald, but you and I know it's not. Because Drudge still rules their world and we're still just the lefties on the side, not creating the narratives.