I have been reading political blogs to try and find out what makes particular ones good meme spreaders. One the left I looked at Eschaton and DailyKos and on the right Instapundit and Little Green Morons.
Conclusions: The left is full of crop circle paranoids. The right is full of stupid angry people.
The sheer volume of information in both does manage to strip things to bare bones facts, but not by virtue of intelligence, just volume – like a colony of bacteria feeding on a corpse.
Analysis still seems to be better in MSM – so I’ll be sticking to my favorite publications for the moment: The Economist and Atlantic Monthly.