The Young Turks Hire Mike Stark

This is great news for Mike and great news for the progressive movement.

In light of the fact that Mike has shown an ability to ask questions others are not willing to ask, for the benefit and education of the public, I am proud to announce that "The Young Turks" on Air America Radio has hired Mike Stark to be a reporter for the show.

I've known Mike for awhile now. He is attending the University of Virginia law school and he is a United States Marine. Once a Marine, Always a Marine. Semper Fi means something to Mike Stark. George Allen ought to look it up (perhaps in his divorce records).

Mike is smart, tough, well educated, dedicated and obviously courageous. This country needs more reporters like Mike Stark. I am proud to be part of an organization that is going to give people like Mike an opportunity to ask more tough questions of our elected officials. The people have a right to know.

And we're not done. We plan to hire more reporters in the future to cover political events around the country for us. If the mainstream press won't ask the questions, then we will.

Obviously this needed to happen about 15 years ago. The traditional media doesn't even really report the news anymore, just various people's reaction to it. An alternative progressive media beyond the Pacifica/Nation/Mother Jones (not to demean them in any way) outlets, one that can be distributed to the entire country, one where actual questioning of assumptions goes on, where leaders are actually held accountable, is growing and growing. It's not simply an online phenomenon.

Air America had a bad funding structure because of deception by their initial investor. Anyone in media knows that you accept losses for a new national rollout for 3-5 years. Ask money-losing Fox News. Ask money-losing magazines like National Review and the Weekly Standard. Because of the initial dry-up in funding, Air America couldn't sustain the money-losing years. But they're still on the air. And there are other progressive radio networks and hosts.

Magazines and blogs offer plenty of progressive writing out there. Brave New Films has remade the distribution system for films, and their product is getting better and better each time out. In an age of YouTube, video is being distributed widely, more so than on cable in many cases. This Kerry story may be getting a lot of play on the 24-hour news, but the big story here is that they're IRRELEVANT. I'll replay my comment from yesterday:

I just run a simple blog, and I put up a post about the Stark situation a half-hour or so after it happened. My traffic has skyrocketed, and everyone's coming off of google searches like "University of Virginia blogger" and "fight George Allen staffer blogger" and stuff like that.

The MSM may be yelling their head off about Kerry, but people online are searching for information on Mike Stark. This is HUGE right now.

The Allen campaign actually gave Mike Stark a gift. They gave him a megaphone. He will be among the progressive media heroes who use a 21st-century approach to counteract the lazy traditional media and the partisan bomb-throwers of the wingnut welfare right.

UPDATE: To borrow a phrase from Keith Olbermann, Heidi Collins is the worst person in the world.

The really scary thing I saw though - because you just don't know who you are dealing with anymore - because he had a backpack on".

Damn dangerous terrorist book-carrying law school students.