It’s a safe bet that I’m some sort of political junky. As such, I tend to read a lot of political magazines. A lot. Well, okay, I primarily read Reason, but time permitting I’ll gladly pick up TNR, The Atlantic, and a host of others. There are also those I know about but don’t read, Washington Monthly, for instance, or American Prospect. I’ve even been known to read NRO and The Weekly Standard sometimes. Oh, and yes, National Journal.
What all these rags (and the hundreds of others I haven’t metioned) have in common, really, is that they wouldn’t exist without the strange beltway culture. WIthout the insular world of think-tanks, politicians, and various campaign committees, there wouldn’t be a market for the sorts of agenda-driven journalism mentioned above. Such obvious political slant, which is neither hidden nor apologized for, sets these publications a bit apart from what the blogosphere has dubbed the MSM.
What’s more, many of those publications are direct participants in the blogosphere, and joined long before many MSM outlets decided to give it a try. Further, those publications in the political media that participate in the blogosphere act much more like, well, bloggers than their MSM counterparts.
The practical upshot being that there really isn’t a good thing to call this class of publications. They aren’t MSM, they aren’t exclusively blogs, and “political magazine” is just clunky. I therefore propose DC Media or DCM. Yeah, that’s right, I’m proposing an acronym. Formally. In a blog post. In any case the DCM plays a pretty big role in not only blogospheric conversation, but also in conversations between beltway insiders, and I think it’s high time we have an easy way to identify them. Your papers, please, as they say.
