Assaulting Olympus

We in the New Media have a Herculean task before us and the smartest of us know it all too well. We stand on the outside of the current power structure, separated by barriers not only physical, but political, from those people we wish to quantify.

We are not part of the Old Guard, the normal media, which has apparently given up its 1st Amendment responsibility to seek the truth from those who would hide it. We are not given press passes, or allowed to ask questions in the Press Room at the White House. We do not have the corporate funding to send reporters into the field, to talk to first-hand sources, and work our way up the chain of evidence to find the man (or woman) behind the curtain.

There are those things we can produce and say "See--we THOUGHT so," but the majority of Americans still get their news from the old media, the media that has abandoned its duties and now serves as little more than an information sieve for the establishment.

THEY have the access, such as it is. We have the fire in our bellies. We hunger for truth in a way that they've forgotten. We HAVE to know. They have to collect their paychecks, after all, and placate their corporate masters.

The New Media, such as it is, is almost entirely supported by us, the interested public. But that money barely gets them the bandwidth and the internet access--it doesn't supply the funds necessary to field real reporters, investigative journalists who can crash the gates and climb to the top of the mountain themselves.

We need strong-willed men and women able and willing to shoulder a shovel and climb down into the muck in order to build whatever back-stair to the sky to lay siege to those who sneer down at us all.

Or am I just blowing smoke?