Lisa: I think your assessment of the BBC is unduly harsh. I have been to Television Centre and indeed it is a dour institutional place. However, the BBC is so vast (the largest media organization in the world as you know) with so many different divisions it's very risky to make generalizations about the whole thing. While older veteran BBC radio and TV journalists may be skeptical of the blogosphere, BBCi, the unit responsible for their website, has an open, hip newsroom and engaging atmosphere. This was my impression when I visited. The BBC has been far more progressive than most big media organizations in embracing open source precepts. They're digitizing their archives and placing them in the public domain, for instance, and their indepth online geopolitical features like the current one on Iran draw heavily from bloggers. Semper: It's important not to overstate the "revolutionary" impact of the Internet on the American conciousness. I disagree that ordinary Americans are better informed now because of the Internet than 10 years ago. There is a hyper-informed class of news junkies and there's everybody else. Witness the persistent incorrect beliefs about Iraq (Saddam & Bin Laden in cahoots, yellowcake, etc).