In doing my research for this article, it occurred to me that a feature about The Young Turks could double as an edition of Youtube Nation. The show definitely wouldn't have reached its current star status without Youtube. Today, it's a billion-view channel that's about to supplement its viewership on cable TV. The evolution of TYT as a media property is an interesting topic on its own, but that's not what this feature really explores. All I'll say is that it makes sense for the first Internet-based news program to get real traction beyond the Web to be a baldly liberal program like The Young Turks.

These days, the Internet is still young, both as a technology and in the average age of its users. Young people tend to be more left-leaning for a variety of reasons, among them being a lack of assets, a lack of children and the promise of rising to power. Plainly, those with little or nothing to lose are quick to embrace change because they're just as likely to benefit from change as suffer from it. Those who are currently in power and have things of substance they'd rather not lose have less incentive to shake things up. That's not only why the Internet is liberal but indeed why the Internet is overwhelmingly young. It's a technology of change, a medium that's rapidly supplanting long-standing institutions with platforms that are more nimble but also much harder to control. It's not just that the Internet is full of people who came to it young enough to make it second nature, it's that the very tone of the Internet appeals to youth.

So, of course a million people are going to watch The Young Turks every day. It's the closest thing in this world to a truly progressive news network. Even MSNBC, a network that seems shy about even calling itself "news", is more centrist than TYT, not that TYT ever posited itself as anything other than roundly liberal. Remember, this isn't just the news organization that rose up on the Internet for being liberal, it's also the news organization that got validated in TV land by getting a show on Al Gore's cable network.

But that's the rub, isn't it? As jazzed as I can get about Internet media becoming the new standard, I've never been under the illusion that the transition is going to un-muddy the waters of news reporting. If TYT is any indication of what the future holds, we can look forward to an era in which journalism loses all meaning. It won't just be because news sources with clear political agendas will exist, but because no one will really seek out dispassionate reporting anymore. There will be the news program for every exclusive group; the liberal, the conservative, every single-issue platform, the insane. The only view I'm not sure will be around is the moderate view. In a time when people never have to listen to things they don't already believe (other than to mock them), I'm not confident people will choose balance over validation.