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Once a year, every politician should be required to catch a train. He should buy a ticket with his own money, line up with the citizenry, fight his way through the crowds, listen to public announcements; and pay close attention to what his fellow travellers are saying and doing. In short, he should be forced to remind himself on a regular basis of how ordinary people experience life, and marvel at the fact that they keep voting major parties back in spite of everything...
Mark Latham in 2003 From the Suburbs paraphrasing Cold River:
Wherever power is concentrated in society - whether in the boardrooms of big business, the pretensions of big media, the political manipulation of big churches or the arrogance of big bureaucracies - we need to be anti-establishment. The outsiders want us to take on the system on their behalf. They want us to disperse influence and opportunity as widely as possible.

The Blog, The Press, The Media: If not now, when? Czech out: Smartmobs
About grassroot journalism unsettling Big Media's monopoly
86% of US MEdia Dragon readers declare that blogs are a useful source of news or links they can't find elsewhere, and most believe that blogs feature a better perspective, faster news and more honesty than traditional media.

About Last Night got written up yesterday in Publishers Lunch:
Finally, the big blog occasion this week is the one-year anniversary of cultural critic Terry Teachout's abundant blog About Last Night. He writes, Blogs are the 21st-century counterpart of the periodical essays of the eighteenth century, the Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers that supplied familiar essayists with what was then the ideal vehicle for their intensely personal reflections. Blogging stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the corporate journalism that exerted so powerful an effect on writing in the twentieth century.
• I still can't figure out why everyone isn't getting their authors to blog [Blogging puts professionals and amateurs on an even footing: That’s why so many professional writers dislike and distrust it]
• · Yes, children, we did used to have blogs. We called them diaries: The Key to Discreet Gossiping ((Creator of the web turns knight: SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE ))
• · · The most delightful Tilly, the king of Moving Headlines: Coming soon: thunderstorm in the blogosphere
PS: I wouldn't move into knickerknotting mode here. But a sledgehammer was used to crack a nut, which managed to sprout legs and likketysplit out of the way on its little Dunlop Volleys.
• · · · See Also After The Lawyers, Can We Kill All PR People? [I would really like to believe that not all PR people are this bad, but I'm beginning to lose faith: PR-approved versions are clearly spun, and we're not fans of spinning]
• · · · · Well, come on. Both Yahoo and Google announced small purchases in the last week, do you think Microsoft could resist? Google-juice: Search Space Acquisitions Are Hot Hot Hot
• · · · · · Isn't it about time we addressed the question of why all that bandwidth is focused downward? Let Us Swim Upstream (( The internet is a communications medium, not a broadcast medium ))
• · · · · · · History is Back Australia Talks Back: Blogs and Blogging