Do you want a hundred more examples like this? I'm sure I could find them easily enough, but would it really make a difference? The fact is that the people who populate the majority of mainstream newsrooms don't have all that much in common with the majority of the people they broadcast that news to.

In a way, it's not so shocking that they don't understand us. It would almost be more shocking if they did. The bigger question is how newsrooms came to be this way in the first place. Why do so many journalists come from the same cities, same cultures, same colleges, and same sensibilities? And what has happened to all of the conservatives along the way?

Where Are the Conservative Media Heroes?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a talk show host. There is nothing wrong with wanting to argue with passion. To persuade. To evangelize. We need more conservative/libertarian voices, not fewer. We need more people of deep conviction willing to speak up. But we also need more people willing to do the hard work of finding facts and connecting the dots; more people willing to cover that local school board or town council meeting on a random Tuesday night.

Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes once spoke to a group of young conservatives at the Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia. He told them that he was always amazed at how many young writers he encountered who graduated from college with the sense that they nearly had a "constitutional right to their own newspaper column."

Barnes relayed to them the story of longtime columnist Robert Novak. Novak never wrote a column that did not contain some piece of original information. Barnes noted that, long before Novak even became a columnist, he was a beat reporter in Nebraska, Illinois, and Indiana. When he finally got a break and went to Washington, D.C., he covered the House Ways and Means Committee-when it was closed to the press! Novak learned to develop sources, to make phone calls, to show up in person to find out what was really going on.

That's a good model to follow.

Many successful conservative pundits first spent years as working reporters. Fred Barnes, for example, was at a newspaper in South Carolina. Cal Thomas spent a while as a correspondent for NBC News. Brit Hume spent years as a print reporter before eventually turning to television.

Michael Goldfarb, a Weekly Standard contributing editor, told the Huffington Post that "a lot of conservatives, they want to be involved in journalism, but our heroes are all pundits. They want to be Rush Limbaugh. They want to be Bill Kristol. They want to be Charles Krauthammer. The model is not Woodward and Bernstein on our side."

He's right, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to do opinion-those who do opinion best root their monologues in fact and logic anyway-we must have people willing to fill all of the roles in the media, not just the ones focused on opinion.

GET RICH NEVER.

It's easy to complain about media bias, but it's important to understand how difficult it can be to get one of the cherished jobs inside a major national news operation. Not because of any bias-on the application they don't ask whom you voted for-but because of something that we conservatives hold dear: capitalism. Supply and demand. The free market.

The truth is that launching a successful journalism career (one that takes you to the highest reaches of American media) is hard-and living the life of the working journalist can be even harder. At the beginning, the numbers are stacked against you. Schools are full of journalism students. After graduation, jobs are scarce. The professors might not tell students this when they first enroll, but very few of those who study journalism in college will ever end up in a job that actually requires reporting on the news.

The 99% Reports on the 1%

Just 1 in 62 newspaper writers and editors are in the top 1 percent of American wage earners. Only 2.7 percent of those who majored in journalism make it into that income group.

Those who do graduate and land a job in journalism probably aren't making a great salary-especially compared with their friends in New York who go to work on Wall Street. As fans of the free market, we can hardly complain about that. If there are few jobs and lots of people willing to do them, then starting salaries are low. The hours and quality of life are usually terrible as well. This is not a nine-to-five job with three weeks of vacation kind of deal. You might work weekends. Or overnight. Or start your morning at 4 A.M., every single miserable day.

The early years of a media career aren't exactly stable, or stationary. Young journalists are the first ones fired when the inevitable restructuring happens, and if you're lucky enough to work for a national company, then you'll likely be awarded with assignments in places not found on anyone's bucket list. I started in radio when I was a teenager. By the time I was thirty I had worked in cities all over the country-from New Haven to Baltimore to Houston to Phoenix.

I've talked to young people who've tried careers in journalism and didn't last long. One took a job in corporate communications. Why? He'd been working weekends at a newspaper and hadn't been to church in a year. Another young woman who'd been an assignment editor at a California TV station quit after a year because she didn't think she could handle the job after the birth of her first child. Can't really blame either of them.

"We're always wired. Never static. And we're completely freed from slow-moving, obsolete corporate media restraints and biases against 'non-traditional' sources of news."

-Michelle Malkin, leading new media entrepreneur and founder of HotAir.com and Twitchy.com Think about it: if you are a talented college senior with aspirations of landing the kind of job that comes with a healthy salary potential-maybe an annual bonus or stock options-and a great work/life balance, would you really pick journalism as a career?

I know I'm painting a grim picture here. Can a person pursue journalism only if they are a hard-living drinker who detests church and would rather look at a laptop than their own family? It's not quite that bad, but, in all honesty, it's not that far off. The "good people" are often chewed up and spit out by the machinery of the media before they even get their feet wet. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule-good people with good families do make it to the top-but they are just that: exceptions.

INFORMATION > DISTRIBUTION.

The good news is that everything is changing. Fast. The days of having to choose between a journalism career and a good life are over-conservatives can finally have both. New media, and all of its forms of distribution, from the Web to cell phones to tablets, has created the single best opportunity for conservatives and libertarians to spread their message since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

I've jumped headfirst into the revolution, first starting a news and information website called The Blaze (I named it that because the biblical Burning Bush consumes everything but the truth) and then launching GBTV, the first ever streaming television news and entertainment network.

If you've never seen a show on GBTV, the best way I can describe it is that it's television on the Internet, not Internet TV. Why the distinction? Well, because when most people hear "streaming network" they think of a guy in his basement with a webcam. I wanted to show people that it doesn't have to be that way. Yes, I spent an absolute fortune on it, but I believe that the way you present yourself to the online world is a major factor in how you will be regarded. A blogger writing opinion columns is not about to compete with the New York Times, and me setting up a few webcams with a white sheet for a backdrop is not about to scare CNN.

Of course, that's not to say that bloggers and webcams don't have their place-they absolutely do. But if you want to compete in the major leagues of media then it's going to take major-league resources. Both properties have their own newsrooms, studios, salespeople, and support staffs. I am treating them as mainstream media properties because that's exactly who I'm going after. I have total confidence that both The Blaze and GBTV will show the world that digital doesn't mean sacrificing first-class journalism and top-notch production values.

The Blaze Is Born

The Blaze was created with the conviction that the truth has no agenda. We knew we wouldn't be the first conservative news site-plenty of terrific, talented journalists and bloggers came before us (Michelle Malkin and Jonah Goldberg come to mind), and there is a long history of thoughtful conservative magazines, from National Review and the American Spectator to Townhall and Newsmax. And I've already mentioned the tremendous reach and influence of the Drudge Report.

Still, we felt there might just be room for a new site that would focus on more than just politics and government. It would go deep into all kinds of stories, from faith and religion to technology and science. We put our heads together and, in less than two months, we built TheBlaze.com.

I'll be honest: I wasn't totally sure at first if people would like it. I believed we were filling a void, but as we got close to launch I started to worry that I was the only one seeing that void. We didn't do focus groups, or test audiences. I was worried that people would think I was throwing up a website just to make money, when, in reality, I was going to take a bath on it.

It turns out that we didn't need to worry much. Scott Baker's internal prediction of 24 million page views for the first month was about as accurate as my jump shot. TheBlaze.com did not do two million page views in the first month . . . it did two million page views the first day. And the traffic hasn't stopped since. By the time TheBlaze.com reached the eighteen-month mark, we had topped one billion page views. Nearly 60 million people had been to the site at least once.

The goal from the beginning was for The Blaze to be more than a website. More than anything, I wanted The Blaze to stand for something. A commitment to finding and telling stories that matter to an underserved audience; an audience that the mainstream media can never reach effectively, because they simply don't understand them.

But while new media presents us with huge opportunities, it also has huge consequences if we fail. If conservatives use these platforms to simply do more opinion pieces or ideological attacks then we will lose the battle for this medium as well. The distribution platform is, after all, simply the way that this information reaches people; it's still the information itself that matters. And that means we have to focus on real journalism, real investigations, real sourcing and fact-checking and research. We don't "win" simply because we can build slicker websites. We only win if we can literally change the way reporting is done; if we can take it from the hands of the coastal elites and deposit it back into the Heartland. That, by the way, is one reason that I moved part of my operations from New York City to Dallas recently. I knew that if I was going to talk the talk about bringing media back to the center of the country then I'd have to walk the walk.

The GBTV Studios in Dallas, Texas IN WITH THE NEW, BUT KEEP THE OLD.

We are truly at a pivot point in the history of media-especially conservative media. And it's because we are finally taking responsibility. We are not waiting for the establishment to change, or for entry-level journalism salaries to skyrocket so that more young conservatives will take those jobs. We've decided to tell the stories ourselves. Stories that matter. Truths that last.

Still the Gold Standard

Roy Greenslade, a journalism professor at City University London and former editor of the Daily Mirror, recently asked his class a simple question: what is your primary news source? Here's what happened: "Newspapers? No more than 20 hands went up. Radio? About the same. Television? Maybe 30. Internet? A forest of hands.

Interestingly, many of the people taking the newspaper course-people hoping to get jobs on papers-admitted to not reading printed editions.

Given that part of the lecture was devoted to entrepreneurial journalism, I also asked: how many of you are hoping to get jobs in traditional "big media" outlets?

Virtually the whole room put up their hands. They may be digital natives, but their ambition is to work for others rather than themselves. They know the risks. They have been told there will be few job openings. They know that they will be expected to work for weeks, maybe months, for nothing. But they are undaunted. Mainstream media remains a lure."

But many Americans, perhaps most Americans, will still get the bulk of their news from "mainstream" outlets. It's kind of ironic, actually: most young people, when asked, say they prefer to get their news online-yet most of those same people would prefer to go work for one of the legacy mainstream media companies.

It would be a huge mistake for conservatives to abandon those platforms. We need people who not only understand our way of thinking, but also live it themselves-at the highest levels in all fields of media. We need to encourage our journalism-minded young people to aspire to those jobs. I fear that one downside of "new media" is that so many of our best will jump to it that we'll have abandoned "old media" completely. That would be a huge, dangerous mistake.

For those conservatives who do take jobs in the mainstream media, let me offer this advice: Bring your background to the table. Don't have a chip on your shoulder and don't come with an agenda. Have an open mind, but don't balk away from the inevitable discussions and debates you'll be thrown into the first time there's a story about a racially motivated murder, a homeowner's association that wants to ban someone from flying their American flag, or a school board that wants to eliminate "God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

You will need to hold everyone you work with to a higher standard. The esteemed conservative social scientist James Q. Wilson had a good sense of this. Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, recently wrote about the advice Wilson once had for him: At one point in my academic career, I called Jim for advice about how best to navigate the waters of liberal academia when one is openly conservative. "Simple," he told me lightheartedly. "Be twice as productive and four times as nice as your colleagues." It was a formula he himself had followed.

You may see those you work with get away with all kinds of ideological ills. Don't get sucked in. Don't duplicate sins you might see on the left with equivalent sins on the right. This business is not about an eye for an eye; it's about heart and brains and soul.

No matter what happens, what medium you find yourself working in, or whether you're working the beat at the local police station for the Cheshire Herald or the Department of Justice for the New York Times, always hold yourself and others to a higher standard-a standard where the truth has no agenda.

"Jihad for Allah is not limited to the specific region of the Islamic countries, since the Muslim homeland is one and is not divided, and the banner of Jihad has already been raised in some of its parts, and shall continue to be raised, with the help of Allah, until every inch of the land of Islam will be liberated, and the State of Islam established."

-Mustafa Mashhur, leader of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt 19962002 JUNE 2009 The Muslim woman sat in the courtroom waiting for the judge. This was it, the day when her misery would finally end. Her life had been filled with pain and humiliation. Her husband had repeatedly raped her over a period of months as she cried and pleaded with him to stop. Today, she was seeking a court order that would finally end the abuse.

After what seemed like an eternity, the judge entered the courtroom. You could cut the tension with a knife. The abused woman hoped this would be the last day that she would ever have to live in fear of this man. A simple restraining order was all she needed.

Silence fell over the court as Judge Joseph Charles began to speak.

A few minutes later, the judge had finished with his ruling. Silence once again overtook the courtroom, but this time it was because the spectators had been left in shock.

According to Judge Charles, the preponderance of the evidence clearly demonstrated that the defendant had harassed and assaulted his wife, but there was more. The judge also ruled that the husband had done so with no criminal intent. In fact, the judge said, "The Court believes that (the defendant) was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and that was not prohibited."

You can understand why the spectators might have been confused. How could harassing and abusing your wife not be prohibited? How could a man's desire for sex trump his wife's right to not consent to it?

The answer is as simple as it is outrageous: It's because this Muslim man lives according to Islamic law-known as shariah. This law allows him to beat and rape his wife, especially when she resists his sexual advances. Since he was operating under the teachings of his faith he had every right to act as he did.

Sanity Ruled in the End

So that you're not left totally outraged, our legal system did work . . . eventually. An appellate court overturned Judge Charles's ruling and issued the restraining order, giving the woman the protection she was seeking.

What is most incredible about this story is that it did not occur in Iran or Morocco. It happened in a New Jersey family court.

This specific kind of court case is (thankfully) relatively rare, but it serves to illustrate how our democracy can, without vigilance, incubate "a state within a state." The legal system of the Islamic state can live and breathe within our supposedly secular democracy.

Despite the thundering silence from the mainstream media, the truth is that a small but increasing number of American Muslims are slowly, almost silently, being allowed to live by their own shariah law. Whether it's misguided allegiance to political correctness, or just pure incompetence, that is preventing this reality from being discussed openly, I do not know. But I do know this: if we continue to pretend that it is not happening, that those who practice shariah would love nothing more than for it to be widely accepted as the supreme law for U.S. Muslims, then it most certainly will.

ISLAMIC LAW 101.

Since the concept of Islamic law is new to many Americans, it's helpful to first take a step back and understand exactly where it comes from.

Shariah is an Arabic word meaning "The Straight Path" (Quran 45:18). Another translation is "the path to the watering hole." To the Muslims who practice this version of Islam strictly, shariah is a codification of the rules of the lifestyle (or "deen") ordained by God (or "Allah"). In other words, shariah can govern and dictate every aspect of life. It's considered by many Muslims to be the perfect expression of divine will and justice and is therefore considered to be the supreme law that governs all aspects of Muslims' lives-irrespective of where they live.

Shariah is derived from four principal sources: the Quran, the Sunna or Hadith, Ijma, and Qiyas.

The Quran: The central, sacred text of Islam. Muslims believe that it was revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel during twenty-three years of the Prophet's life at Mecca and Medina.

The Sunna or Hadith: Sunna is the example and practice of the Prophet's life as gleaned from the Hadith, which are a broad range of oral traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. These have been collected by variably reliable sources that chronicle what Muhammad's contemporaries noted that he did, said, or personally observed others to have done during his lifetime.