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In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren't faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game?

Here's how:

1) Great research trumps good access to the powerful: The Stewart piece makes this controversial but critical point in two different ways. For one thing, the story shows how access to the nation's most powerful CEOs -- supposedly the big advantage of a journalistic enterprise like CNBC -- isn't worth a warm bucket of spit when it results in slo-pitch softball questions, for fear of offending the rich and powerful. And so we see Ford's CEO grilled about Kid Rock's performance at the auto show, Ponzi scammer (later revealed) Alan Stanford quizzed on whether it's fun to be a billionaire, and Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo gushing at how corporate chiefs were still telling her that their companies were doing great, even as the massive iceberg was casting its shadow over the hull of the American economy.

Here's the video:

Journalism as we know it is in crisis. Daily newspapers are going out of business at an unprecedented rate, and the survivors are slashing their budgets. Thousands of reporters and editors have lost their jobs. No print publication is immune, including the mighty New York Times. As analyst Allan Mutter noted, 2008 was the worst year in history for newspaper publishers, with shares dropping a stunning 83 percent on average. Newspapers lost $64.5 billion in market value in 12 months.

If newspapers die, so does reporting. That's because the majority of reporting originates at newspapers. Online journalism is essentially parasitic. Like most TV news, it derives or follows up on stories that first appeared in print. Former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll has estimated that 80 percent of all online news originates in print. As a longtime editor of an online journal who has taken part in hundreds of editorial meetings in which story ideas are generated from pieces that appeared in print, that figure strikes me as low.

The information universe today is not, of course, comprehensive, nor could it ever be. What appears in the newspapers is a result of editorial whim and financial pressures. But this limited and capricious hodgepodge of information is far preferable to the self-selected alternative that awaits us -- it stimulates parts of our brain that would otherwise atrophy.

It's much easier to consume unfamiliar information in a newspaper than on the Internet.

Today, those institutions are threatened as never before, in part because of the disappearance of old-school publishers who regarded their media properties as a public trust, in part because of the rise of new media.

This bleak situation has given rise to a once-unthinkable notion: removing the news from market forces altogether by subsidizing it. In a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, two business analysts suggested turning newspapers into "nonprofit, endowed institutions -- like colleges and universities."

Most journalists probably find something vaguely creepy about this idea; it's a little too high-minded, abstract and self-congratulatory to fit with their self-image as regular Joes and Jills. There are also legitimate concerns whether foundations or other public supporters would influence editorial content or direction. But the alternative is disturbing.

Teachers also are aware that Kaplan’s presence will continue to be felt long after its coaches have moved on: completion of the thirty-six-lesson SAT Advantage program, which includes three abbreviated tests and one full-length practice exam, requires a full forty hours of instruction time.

The authors [of a report pointing to how Washington DC charters performed so much better than public schools] say that charters and traditional schools “are, in general, educating students from similar backgrounds.” To establish this fact, they cite data about income and race—and about nothing else. But low-income students are not all alike, and the authors make little real attempt to address the long-standing, basic question about charters: Are the students who choose to attend these rigorous charter schools more ambitious, more determined, more focused than the students they leave behind?

Not all “low income” families are equally low-income. Are the low-income kids in the charter schools as low-income as the kids in the regular schools? We can think of a few simple ways to start to check, but the authors didn’t try to do so.

WASHINGTON POST HEADLINE (12/15/08):
Gains Made In Educating City’s Poor Children
Rigorous Methods, Ample Funds Linked to Improved Test Scores

We think that’s a fair account of what the authors said in their report. They suggested two reasons for the charter schools’ higher scores; the charters have a funding advantage, they said, and the charters apply rigorous methods not often seen in the regular schools. Five days later, the editors voiced their own views—and skipped right past that funding advantage. The eds made the news report’s tale even simpler: Charter school kids are outscoring their peers “because the charters are free to innovate and implement practices that work.”

Soon, the editors identified a few of these practices: “[L]onger school days, summer classes, an inclusive culture of parental involvement, and the power to hire teachers who are committed to a school's philosophy and dismiss teachers who aren't up to the job.”

According to the editors, charters students are doing better because of those practices—and that’s the end of the story. No other explanations need apply. Charter kids are not doing better “because they come from more privileged backgrounds,” the editors specifically said.

But is that true? We’re not real sure why the editors feel so certain.

Which is why they -- we -- hired an Academy Award-winning director, James Mangold, and a brilliant, Academy Award-nominated cinematographer, Wally Pfister.

(And then we put Kid Rock in it. As my friend Larry Doyle once said, "It's like buying a Ming vase and filling it with dog shit.")

Obama's innovative use of the Web during his campaign, for everything from encouraging supporters to vote to raising funds, marks a turning point in how politicians use the Internet and in how citizens can participate for social change, Gore said.

"What happened in the election opens up a whole new range of possibilities," he said. "Now's the time to really move swiftly to exploit these new possibilities."

Gore also talked about how his company Current TV, of which he is chairman and cofounder, is attempting to use the Internet to break television's decades-old monopolization of information, which he said has had negative consequences.

"A reason why the political system hasn't been operating very well until this election is the deadening influence of the TV medium as it has been operating," he said.

Asked by conference chair John Battelle if he is worried that this Web-powered social involvement among citizens will lose steam, Gore said: "No, I'm not. It's very much in its infancy, barely beginning. We aren't many years away from TV sinking into the digital world and becoming a part of it."

"The social activism that's made possible by these new tools is just beginning to take off," he added.

Gore, who has become a leading voice in recent years for the protection of the environment, said President-elect Obama should be bold in his goals to address climate change. For example, he should set a national goal for the U.S. to get all its electricity from renewable and non-carbon sources within 10 years.

"We can do it," he said, amidst heavy applause from the audience.

He cited various imminent dangers for the environment, including the 75 percent to 80 percent chance that in the next 5 years, the North Pole ice cap, which has been around for about 3 million years and is almost the size of the continental U.S., will disappear.

"This is an apocalyptic signal from the planet itself," Gore said.

It's true -- the way that the U.S. is portrayed on Al Jazeera matters, and we take that responsibility very seriously. We followed up the initial piece by sending the reporter to get reaction from African-American Obama supporters. We gave the last word in this saga to the owner of a PR firm in Atlanta:

"They are not America. They don't reflect America, they don't represent the America that I live in and am a part of, and they don't reflect the majority of Americans."

We will have to wait until November 4 -- or the early hours of November 5 -- to know who Americans will choose to be their next President. But there are certain things we do know now.

After the dark and gloomy years of recent times, this race has electrified the world. It's a U.S. election that has more international resonance that perhaps any in our lifetime.

And all of these issues have been debated and explored in hundreds of hours of coverage on Al Jazeera English, an award-winning channel that is broadcast in more than 100 countries.

Except for most of the United States. Political and financial interests have pressured American cable companies from carrying Al Jazeera English.

In a country that regards itself as the world's leading democracy, that is regrettable because Al Jazeera's coverage has been fair, comprehensive and respectful of different points of view. And a window on the world.

As the world welcomes this new and exciting U.S. era, isn't it time for Americans -- when it comes to being able to see Al Jazeera - to actually be allowed to make their own judgment?

"After months of campaign trail eloquence... we finally learned what Senator Obama's economic goal is. As he told Joe, he wants to 'spread the wealth around," McCain told a boisterous crowd gathered on a high school football field in Belton, Missouri.

"If I'm elected president, I won't raise taxes on anyone, especially small businesses. Senator Obama will and that will force them to cut jobs."