On today’s Wilshire & Washington, we ask the question: Who’s on top, the MSM or Digital Media? Who’s leading the discussion, why, and is it a good thing? To help us navigate this tricky landscape, we’ve got New York Times reporter Brian Stelter with us; Stelter covers television and digital media, and spent over three years as the editor of TVNewser.

We start with the health care debate, and how digital media has been driving a lot of this debate. Without the blogs, would the public option have lasted this long? Probably not. We tackle Obama’s First 100 Daysâ„¢. Remember how CNN covered that “story” and then how they covered Obama’s first 200 days as well? They called it news; I call it basic arithmetic. Obviously these stories are moves for higher ratings (isn’t CNN behind the Fly Fishing Network at this point?) but did it work? Is it good for us?

We continue our beat-down of CNN with the coverage of the Iranian Election. Digital media was all over that story, yet CNN – which wants to be a “serious” news channel – defended its lack of coverage (remember #cnnfail?) As Stelter notes, cable news needs to be a live stream, and once Iran became a story, CNN should have followed. But isn’t it a little unfair to bash CNN? Our standards for them are so high (we don’t expect the same from MSNBC or Fox) but when CNN covers silly issues like Michael Jackson’s funeral so extensively, it just confuses us.

While digital has had its moments this year, Stelter believes the MSM is still driving the story most of the time, especially with topics like Afghanistan and Iraq, which – because of cost and safety – are impossible for bloggers to really cover. Then again, the major networks didn’t even have Kabul bureaus for years, even though we had a war going on in Afghanistan. Good job, guys. This begs the question: Should the MSM actually cover active US warzones? No? Err…

Finally, we discuss a couple of those nutty stories in the past year – balloon boy, the arrest of the Harvard Professor for being black and in his home, what kind of beer Obama is drinking… you know, real stories. With things like these dominating MSM coverage, don’t we need a filter for all these non-stories? (I’m told this filter is usually called “editors.” Never heard of ‘em.) And as we distribute, and redistribute, news and content, shouldn’t we ourselves take some responsibility and ask, “Is this news good for us?”

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player to the right.

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Wednesday at 7:30am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.

About this time last year Democratic strategists were patting each other on the back and congratulating each other on masterminding the enduring rise of The Progressive Majority built on the backs of bloggers and digital media as a messaging and fundraising machine. Republicans were supposedly leaps and bounds behind at that time, but after a year’s worth of execution on the part of both parties, it now looks like the space could be anyone’s to own and we’re about to see it all play out in 2010′s midterm elections.

Today we’re joined by Patrick Ruffini, a leading conservative blogger, and a partner at Engage and The Next Right, a forum for rising young leaders. Ruffini recently wrote a piece detailing how Obama’s official website has started fishing for emails again. What happened to that fabled 13 million person list of emails? Is the sign-up rate going down? Does this reflect the general discontent of Obama’s supporters with the glacial pace of change?

Ruffini also helps us look at the state of politics online as we approach 2010. Is the GOP in better position now to take the new media battle to the Democrats? It’s certainly possible, with Ruffini claiming that the conservative site Hot Air is getting more hits than DailyKos. We also take a look at what the internet has done to the political discourse, and how it reinforces people’s political opinions rather than informing them, and the problem with what is basically a “forever war” between the two parties. (At least it keeps all the political commentators employed!)

Finally, we talk Obama’s pro-war peace speech at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Oslo, which was criticized by both the Right and the Left. Isn’t this what we asked for as a president? A nuanced, intelligent, thoughtful person who is considerate of all the complexities of war and peace? Oh, yeah, he’s a socialist and a puppet for the insurance industry. That’s right. Ok, no one liked it then, so how does Obama inspire us again? Does he make the campaign about us again, empowering individuals to make the change they wanted like he did in 2008? Or was that all a façade?

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player to the right.

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Wednesday at 7:30am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.