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There's also a wave of self-flagellation going on right now as some "blue-state" editors do public contrition for their alleged blindness to "red-state" values.

But many other media critics are coming to the conclusion that the most dramatic lesson of this campaign is that the impartial, unemotional postwar model of mainstream journalism simply may not be up to covering the current political climate.

The argument: Out of fear of appearing too partisan or adversarial, the press failed to sufficiently demand answers to important questions, failed to prevent outright falsehoods from gaining currency, failed to uncover deception, malfeasance and incompetence in our most powerful institutions, failed to pierce the façade of cynically stage-managed events, and failed to demand accountability from our leaders.

And now, with the second Bush administration in the offing, the mainstream press faces four more years with a president whose contempt for it is easily measured by his refusal to meet with it regularly — or directly answer its questions when he does.

Not mainstream journalism the practice, but the contraption it has for explaining, situating and defending itself has in 2004 finally broken down, given out after 40 years of heavy, reliable use. And nothing did more damage to the taken-for-granted world of the American press than the shocks of September 11th. Part of the problem is philosophical, which almost guarantees a chronic lack of attention in newsland.

Consider the sentence: "I am a reporter, a non-combatant." It appears to be a statement of identity: This is who I am. This is who I am not. But it very much resembles the statement: "Jewish by birth, but I am German!" In both cases, the truth of the statement I am... hinges on the actions of others. You are not a non-combatant if they shoot at you when they see PRESS on the car. You're not a German if you're born in Germany but Germans classify you a Jew. In those situations you have to be able to think politically to understand exactly who you are.

Something like this has happened to mainstream journalists in the domestic arena. They have had their professional identity changed for them by the actions of others, while simultaneously insisting this turn of events is impossible. "We are the Fourth Estate, a vital check on government" is one of those tricky sentences. It may be crucial to professional identity, but then these are the same professionals who must realize that George W. Bush has changed them into an interest group and undone their identity as the Fourth Estate.

If for 40 percent of the country, you're the liberal media, what that means is that four in ten Americans have changed you into that. This is CNN's identity problem; and there is no simple solution. If for 15 percent of Americans, you're on television talking about the news, but you're a joke, they have changed you into their entertainment.

It is in this sense, I think, that Al Queda changes the press. Terror today relies on the news media to complete the act. It knows the news media will, most of the time, cooperate, on the principle of reporting "what happened." Even more challenging is that the threat of further strikes weakens popular support for truthtelling by expanding people's willingness not to know, if it might hurt the war on terror, and by increasing many times over the portion of state activity hidden from public view: truth untellable.

All these things are happening to the press today-- to "old media" as so many have taken to calling it. It is being defined by others because its self-definitions have fallen out-of-date. It is being pressed hard by its opponents because it is unable to say, "we have opponents."

That kind of overturn hasn't happened in mainstream journalism for at least 30 years, and almost no one in mainstream journalism is ready for it to happen now. But in the tech community, even the kids in college have lived through a couple of revolutions. It's no big deal.