Right now, the internet is EXACTLY the place to go for in depth reporting. The internet provides me with a lot of things the mainstream media leaves out, including:

- original documentation. VERY valuable. Almost without exception, access to original documents reveals that a lot has been left out in news stories, and in some cases, the mainstream media has actually distorted the meaning and facts.

- Opinions and eyewitness reports from the source of the story that the media has decided weren't worth reporting.

- Analysis by a wide variety of sources, professional and otherwise, of media stories and claims.

Rathergate was the result of the internet. In the old days, who would have had access to those forged documents? Who would have seen them? And even if someone had seen them and spotted the discrepancies, who would he have told?

In the old days, someone pointing out a problem with a newspaper article would have had the option of writing a letter to the editor, which may or may not get printed. What other outlet would there be, unless you have your own newspaper?

Now everybody has the pulpit. Doesn't mean everybody is accurate, but that's where your own intelligence comes in.

The point I'm making is that nobody in the mainstream media printed anything the "happy seabees" said, even to comment on it. The information would have been consigned to a few readers of an obscure military paper.

Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite used to be gods. Thank goodness that isn't the case any more.

You can make a very good case that Bush is president now thanks to the internet. Just as one example, in the old days the Swift Boat Veterans would have run their little ads in the two or three places they could afford it, and then run out of money. Might have made a few local papers. The mainstream media was firmly ignoring them until they couldn't any more.