PoliticsDaily: Old-School Journalism in a Dot-Com Package

What PoliticsDaily.com offers is effectively counter-programming: Instead of attempting to dominate the 10-second news cycle, we mean to offer a thoughtful take on events. We value writing at a moment when the conventional wisdom says that nothing could matter less. Instead of hiring twenty-somethings on the cheap, I've favored seasoned folks to the point that our unofficial tagline is "250 years of journalism.'' Another way in which we're different is that we're paying bloggers for their work-because it is work, and thus ought to be compensated.

In his New York Times column some weeks ago, Nicholas Kristof worried in print about whether, as ink-on-paper news outlets disappear, we'll get more and more of our information from highly partisan sources that only confirm and never challenge our existing biases. PoliticsDaily.com wants to be the antidote to that impulse, offering smart pieces from across the ideological spectrum.

I recently was in Evansville, Ind., where my parents live, to cover Sarah Palin's speech at a pro-life dinner there. (No, we most certainly are not above luring in readers with a gateway drug, hoping they stick around for the hard stuff). At a League of Women Voters lunch there, the local Congressman, former Vanderburgh County Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, made the same point Kristof had: "When you see the gotcha that goes on,'' with both right and left not only claiming they're correct 100 percent of the time but "trying to make the other side look like serial killers,'' neither side is wholly credible. "Whether you watch 24/7 Fox or 24/7 MSNBC,'' he told the crowd. "Don't watch only that.'' Instead, make sure you're exposed to multiple views, and thus the whole picture. Which is what we'll do our best to offer at PoliticsDaily.com.