The Media—the traditional one, at any rate—mattered less and less. The ability to connect directly, under our own umbrella, was making one thing very clear: We were The Media.

mean anything at all. On the front page of the gray old Times, I’m liable to encounter a chatty article about frying with propane gas. CNN lavished hours of airtime on a runaway bride. The magisterial tones of Walter Cronkite, America’s rich uncle, are lost to history, replaced by the ex-cheerleader mom style of Katie Couric. One reason the notion