1.	In the 20th Century we got our news from an ever-more-uniform monoculture. Maybe the spin is different between NPR and Fox News, but the same basic assumptions are behind their stories. Neither challenged Bush as we went to war. Only the NY Times, among the traditional press, put up the meekest of challenges. Yet the American way is democracy, one man one vote, a republic of the people, by the people and for the people. Only Howard Dean, among the candidates, used that feature effectively.
2.	People laugh when Fox says they're Fair And Balanced, and of course we're meant to laugh, because it's a joke. It's a sign of how totally we are controlled, when our only way of getting information is through television.
3.	Last night, the night before two crucial primaries, Michigan and Washington, I circled through the cable news channels, about five of them, to see what's up. They're talking about the murder of an eleven year old girl. All of them, all the time. There was other news yesterday. The President announced a task force to investigate the claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The US government budget for 2005 is fresh news, and the President, who's looking weak against the Democrats, is going on Meet the Press on Sunday. All of this should be fresh fodder for the Capital Gang et al, but they're on vacation, and we're left with the usual fare, news-as-entertainment.
4.	I'm an engineer and a writer, and after years of work on content management, editorial interfaces, syndication and desktop tools, delivering a variety of viewpoints to thinking citizens is something we can now engineer. Technologically we're ready to route around the news channels. Had Dean decided to help develop the human network of citizen journalists, providing coverage not just of his campaign, and not just the good spin of his campaign, he might have been able to survive the onslaught of the television networks.
5.	It will eventually happen. Some day, maybe in 2008, we will elect a President who is not subject to the veto of the television networks. In the meantime, the techniques that the Dean campaign could have used are available to any candidate running for local office because the networks don't reach below the national level. The competition there is with local television and local newspapers, which are shrinking rapidly.
6.	In war it's best to zig to the zag of your enemy. In this case, Dean zigged to their zig, and lost. But in doing so, he showed us clearly how to do the zag. The challenge is to find a candidate with the courage to use the new technology to route around the television networks. We know how to do it, the Dean campaign removed all doubt.
7.	Dave Winer