Another fine piece by Peggy Noonan. This time it is a requiem to the MSM.
The Rathergate Report is a watershed event in American journalism not because it changes things on its own but because it makes unavoidably clear a change that has already occurred. And that is that the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over. That is, the monopoly enjoyed by three big networks, a half dozen big newspapers and a handful of weekly magazines from roughly 1950 to 2000 is done and gone, and something else is taking its place. That would be a media cacophony. But a cacophony in which the truth has a greater chance of making itself clearly heard.
A word that Noonan often uses as she refers to the rise of the MSM is monopoly. She goes on to lay out a great sketch on the rise of the MSM post WWII to its fall in 2004, led by the events of Rathergate and the birth of such media outlets as Fox News, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the Internet (which is the battleground of the pajamadeen, a.k.a. the Bloggers).
