ABSTRACT
John Nichols suggests that organic linkages between new media and traditional journalism, Tweets and Facebook posts, original YouTube videos and aggregated content, was “more than mere aggregation, more than blogging. This chapter aims to create a progressive media site that would focus primarily on Pennsylvania and the region, focusing particularly on areas outside the major cities. The conservative communication infrastructure works something like this: Fox News interviews an expert from the Heritage Foundation about an inflammatory report in Breitbart News. The right-wing’s investment in their media infrastructure has certainly borne fruit—and in abundance. Of the top ten cable-tv news shows, as recently as 2017 all ten were Fox News shows. The lack of a progressive media infrastructure also limits the spaces to practice the kind of muckraking journalism that on occasion breaks into the mainstream media. As much as the rise of new media has been celebrated for democratizing media, it has also helped impoverish it.
