Revolution of web-based media

I'm blogging live while covering John Harris, the Editor in Chief of the upstart newspaper-Internet hybrid Politico.com. After 21 years of writing for the Washington Post, he started this business, which is transforming coverage of government at all levels.

He admits that the editorial decisions to run front page stories on mage-outlets like the Washington Post have traditionally driven policy and talk on all of the newscasts. He believes that's now changing with these expanded sources of news.

One of the attractions to web-based news is the obvious: you can get news to millions of people much quicker (as news happens) and for much less cost than traditional news outlets. His particular site has 1.5 million unique visitors per month. He says reputation will differentiate serious journalism on the web from more sensationalism-style sites.

Sites like the Wall Street Journal and other specialized and established sites (Democrat-Gazette?) can continue to charge to access web-based content -- at least presently, he says. More and more of the content from the New York Times is being placed in front of the wall rather than behind it. He says columnists like Maureen Dowd are finding themselves increasingly irrelevant and out of everyday conversation because of this phenomenon of being inaccessible from the casual surfer looking for opinion. It'd be interesting to see Harris debate Walter Hussman on the issue. Maybe it can be arranged for a brown bag luncheon over at the Clinton Library. Skip?