The new new media

I was having an IM discussion with a once and future colleague, and I was looking for a way to express the way I feel about the decline of traditional journalism and the rise of the wild and lawless Internet, along with other unconventional communication. And I wanted to tie into that the sophisticated attacking style of today's politicians.

Fortunately, she said it for me:

i'm not sure the dichotomy is snarky v sober -- i think what we've lost is the authoritative voice (yeah, so we've heard) but we haven't got an idea of what to use in its stead. if we were educated to have a great capacity for critical thought -- i mean this as a culture -- we might have some idea what to do with all these new voices and the passing of the old ones (to whatever extent that's truly happened). as it is, we're sitting in a giant sandbox with no shovels or pails. it's not pretty. either we figure out some alternatives or we continue as we have recently -- everyone just throwing sand at everyone else