"As became clear from the rather large and diverse crowd here, the blogosphere has become for the left what talk radio has been for the right: a way of organizing and communicating to supporters. Blogging is nowhere near the force among Republicans as it is among Democrats, and talk radio is a much more effective tool for Republicans."
Forty years ago, Bernard Cohen (1963) famously observed that the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is strongly successful in telling its readers what to think about (p. 13). Is this still true in an era when communicative power has been radically decentralized?