“An even greater challenge to both newspapers and broadcast networks is the growing power of the internet as a news distribution platform,” reads an online summary for News War, a four-hour PBS Frontline special examining the political, cultural, legal, and economic forces challenging the news media today.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of 60 Minutes, says “we haven’t seen the model for how broadcast journalism is going to end up on the Internet, but it has to go there. I mean, you don’t see anybody between 20 and 30 getting their news from the evening news; you see them getting it online.”

An even more seminal quote comes from Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, one of the country’s most popular blogs and a reportedly receiver of 3 to 5 million visitors per week. “People want to be part of the media,” Moulitsas tells Frontline. “They don’t want to sit there and listen anymore. They’re too educated. They’re taught…to be go-getters and not to sit back and be passive consumers. And the traditional media is still predicated on the passive consumer model — you sit there and watch.”