Ezra Klein writes a lengthy article in the American Prospect about Gore and his campaign against the state of the media today.

The most important speech of Al Gore's post-non-presidency was neither well-covered nor particularly dramatic. He delivered it against a plain blue curtain, and when he finished, the applause rippled but never roared. None in attendance, however, would have dared call it boring. ... They must have been wondering what changed. Over the next 48 minutes, Gore laced into the state of the media, lamenting the "systematic decay of the public forum," and echoing Walter Lippmann's belief that the propaganda emanating from the press corps was rendering America's "dogma of democracy" void. Journalism, Gore said, had grown "dysfunctional," and now "fails to inform the people."

One of Gore's tactics in this campaign is to bypass the media entirely. He has his speeches sponsored by Move-On. They email his entire speech to the millions of Move-On members who pass it on to whomever they choose - friends, neighbors, family - and blogs promote it. They call it "viral marketing". The advantage is the ability to avoid that media filter that emphasizes things like what color shoes Gore's wearing as opposed to the more important content of the speech.

Something else he's done is Current TV, an independent tv station that broadcasts content made by viewers.

If the problem with television is that the audience can't talk back to the flickering box, then the answer, clearly, is to have them talk through it. Thus, Current devotes a large chunk of its programming hours to viewer-contributed content. The Web site offers instructions on how to create videos ("pods"), which amateur auteurs then upload to www.Current.tv. The Current community then watches and rates the pods online, elevating the better ones, eventually, into rotation on the channel. The content is surprisingly strong -- including everything from clever, animated political shorts to reports from the Katrina-devastated Gulf and even a poignant, artfully done pod following a birth -- but the response has been tepid. No matter. If the revolution is indeed to be televised,it'll be because Current helps do for television what blogs have done to punditry: democratize it, decredentialize it, open it to the masses.

Those of us who don't get Current TV from our cable/satellite masters will have to watch the programs online, if at all.

In May, Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" comes out. It's about global warming. It received a standing ovation at the Sundance Festival. After his dismal public appearances in the 2000 election, you wouldn't expect that sort of a response to a film with Gore talking about science.

I like the new new Gore. Free from his handlers and advisors, he's a much more engaging speaker. How long will it take the rest of the Democrats to realize their political advisors can't advise on anything except how to dig the hole deeper? I'm banking on never. The advisors would never put out a poll asking what people thought of their advice and as we've seen of late, Democrats can't make a decision without poll numbers.