It's hard out here for a blogger.

And hard for online journalists, unemployed new media producers, and just about anyone else dabbling in journalism without professional backing.

Beyond the basic financial challenges, there is scant legal help for members of the new media, even though they face...

See if you can follow this logic.

A recent article in Newsweek states that Democrats could have won a "very significant number of Republican votes in Congress" for the stimulus -- had there only been a "meaningful tax-cut component." Political journalism is often imaginative, but this verges...

Politico's lead story today tracks how both progressive and conservative activists are using intramural fundraising threats to challenge the party establishment.

For Democrats, the fight is about accountability for campaign promises. For Republicans, sophisticated grassroots fundraising is a tool in the ideological squabbles over new congressional candidates...

Presidential elections are not usually marked by anniversaries. The political calendar turns on power, its seasons crisply measured by who is in charge. One hundred days since inauguration, four years until term limits come due--these are the conventional units of political time. It is evidently different, however, for this very...

Twitter, the over-hyped, under-appreciated social network for sharing chit-chat and links, just launched a tool enabling users to create their own lists on the site. The Journal explains the basics:

The new feature allows Twitter users to organize the people they follow and streamline their feeds. Others can then...

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn made headlines last week for calling out Fox News. Now she's drawing attention for comments she made about how the Obama campaign managed to control and route around the traditional press. You can bet this video is going viral. (Embedded below).

In...

Political reporters have now toggled from worrying that Obama gets "too much" media coverage to asking whether he is "too" good at communicating through the media. Maybe even obnoxiously good. Maybe even -- here comes that loaded word from the primaries -- too articulate.

The

Baby rattlesnakes kill faster than their adult counterparts.

The little guys release all their venom in a single bite, while adult snakes use a small dose initially, having learned it's best to save lethal attacks for the end of a fight.

In Washington, the oldest snakes in the health care...

The White House's battle with Fox News reached a new high on Sunday, when Communications Director Anita Dunn went on national television to blast Fox as a partisan organization that functions as an appendage to the Republican Party.

"Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm...

Perhaps we still do not understand the current Obama backlash.

David Brooks caused a small stir on Friday by arguing that conservative radio hosts are, paradoxically, a lot like well-behaved children. They are seen - splashed across magazine covers and endlessly profiled - but not heard,...

Just as hot trends meet their death when discovered by The Times Style Section-- see Trucker Hats -- emerging cultural themes usually go mainstream after a close-up in the paper's Week in Review. Now, after years of skirmishing below the Times' radar, the paper of record has taken notice...

After his big five television interviews on Sunday, President Obama carved out an even larger slice of time for one print journalist, hitting the links for 18 holes of golf with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

The only other players, according to a pool report,...

Two former advisers to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, famed labor organizer Marshall Ganz and urban policy expert Peter Dreier, are now publicly criticizing Obama's health care reform strategy.

In a frank op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday, they contrasted Obama's campaign promises of organizing...

President Obama wanted this to be a quiet news week. "I have specific instructions from the President for the press corps -- he wants you to relax and have a good time," spokesman Bill Burton told reporters on Sunday. "Nobody is looking to make any news," he added, referencing...

It's cool to be a liberal blogger again. Just ask Bill Clinton.

Speaking to the fourth annual Netroots Nation convention in Pittsburgh, where a slew of bloggers, online activists and traditional pols gathered this weekend, the former President heralded attendees for elevating "public discourse" and pushing their agenda...

Pittsburgh, PA -- President Clinton took the stage at Netroots Nation Thursday night, opening with a joke about how many Republicans think President Obama was born in the United States, teeing off earlier remarks by Rep. Brad Miller. Then he turned serious, crediting the netroots for playing a constructive role...

President Barack Obama's controversial detention plan for Guantanamo detainees keeps leaking.

First, anonymous administration officials said the president might authorize "preventive detention" for detainees through an executive order, shutting Congress out of the process. The White House pushed back, stating there is no such order right now. (That...

The Obama administration is rushing towards a unilateral plan to imprison people without trial, according to a huge, new joint article from the Washington Post and ProPublica. The proposal would completely cut Congress out of the process by using an executive order to essentially bring Gitmo stateside:

The Obama...

President Obama took a question from an Iranian citizen during his Tuesday press conference, via Huffington Post reporter Nico Pitney, marking a small step towards a more open and interactive Washington press corps. You might not know that, however, from the press corps' reaction.

Since Obama was inaugurated,...

So the conservative pundits are walking back their overheated attacks on Judge Sotomayor, from Newt Gingrich eating his tweets to Rush Limbaugh announcing he may even back her nomination. But all the theatrics are obscuring a larger problem for the GOP: The fabled conservative media echo...