Environmental journalists interested only in the adjective, and not the noun, need read no further: This piece by conservative author Terry Eastland has lots to say about journalism, little, at least directly, about environment or environmental journalism specifically. But if you want a sense -- or at least an informed perspective -- on your general field of journalism, take a look at this. Skeptics may have no trouble discerning Eastland's own slant. He is, after all, publisher of The Weekly Standard, formerly with The American Spectator, and, get this, a Reagan administration/Ed Meese Department of Justice political appointee.

A former editorial writer with the Virginian Pilot and the San Diego Union, his credentials as a tried-and-true conservative are beyond reproach. Eastland's Wilson Quarterly essay on the evolution from "mainstream media" to the blogosphere (Advice: Add that term to your spell checker's dictionary, you'll be seeing it more in the future.) provides valuable insights and reminders.

The First Amendment, he avers, "doesn't guarantee that today's news media -- some would already say yesterday's -- will be tomorrow's." He points to a time when reporters "believed that they had a responsibility to improve society, and that they thought of themselves -- as no ink-stained wretch had before -- as professionals." But "they never acquired the self-regulatory mechanisms found in law, medicine, or even business.” One result: "Life is no longer so good" for mainstream media, what with declining viewership, evaporating circulations, and increased competition for ad revenues. Most journalists' political views -- decidedly liberal, Eastland writes -- also grated on an America becoming more conservative over time. Reporters' objections fell on deaf ears when they appeared to be saying, "If our liberalism is a fact -- and we don't really know that it is -- it's irrelevant."

As for the new media, Eastland finds them "more hospitable to conservative views," notwithstanding concerns that "a notable characteristic of the new media is speed (some would say haste)." He still finds a need and a role for the old mainstream media order, but ... "they're going to have to dial down their imperial arrogance." Eastland's Wilson Quarterly essay may be accessed at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=120801.