It would indeed be interesting to see what would have happened if everything to do with Watergate had been accessible to the average American through the internet. Court proceedings, arguments from various people, transcripts of statements, and all the rest. For that matter, it would be interesting to think about what massive public access would have meant to earlier administrations. Don't know what might have ended differently for Nixon, but there would have been something more to the argument than the Washington Post pronouncing "thumbs down."

Did you forget that the hearings were televised live, and uninterrupted by commercials, on the national TV networks and on radio? That's all there was, if you'll recall. No cable, no satellite; i.e., no C-SPAN to shunt them off to.

Do you remember the sanitized transcripts of Nixon's tapes? Nearly overnight mass publication by the Government Printing Office, during the proceedings, not after... followed by the House Committee's re-transcription of the same tapes. Maybe you also remember the claim of "executive privilege" Nixon invoked to try and keep even the bowdlerized version away from the Congress and, therefore, the public.

In other words, "everything to do with Watergate" was accessible to the average American, without an Internet -- though it sometimes took an order from the US Supreme Court to get hold of it.

A great deal more than "the Washington Post pronouncing 'thumbs down'."

I agree that previous administrations (for instance, JFK's) might have fared differently under the same kind of public scrutiny, with or without a blogosphere -- which has only existed after Watergate.

And even though you really didn't speculate an answer to either of my questions (no matter... they weren't that important), I'll answer yours: My primary source of news is NPR, followed by the NBC Nightly (because the local NBC affiliate has the best weather forecaster), supplemented on weekends by the KC Star.