"Talk radio has made an enormous run around establishment media. But the Internet is making an end run around talk radio. Suddenly we're faced with an information age"
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Du Pont’s line is less a celebration of new media than a wary field report from a politician watching gatekeepers get leapfrogged in real time. The phrase “run around” is the key tell: it frames media change as a tactical maneuver, not an enlightenment project. Talk radio didn’t defeat “establishment media” by out-reporting it; it outflanked it, building intimacy, outrage, and habit into the commute. Then the Internet, he notes, pulls the same trick on talk radio, stripping away the host as the bottleneck and turning every listener into a potential broadcaster, curator, or heckler.
The subtext is power anxiety. Du Pont came up in an era when access to mass attention was scarce and therefore governable: a few networks, a few papers, a handful of editorial norms. Talk radio disrupted those norms but still operated on a one-to-many model that politicians could learn to ride: book the segment, feed the sound bite, cultivate the host. The Internet breaks that transactional stability. It multiplies voices, accelerates rumor, and collapses the time between an event and its interpretation.
His closing pivot - “Suddenly we’re faced with an information age” - lands with a politician’s double meaning. “Information age” sounds triumphant, but “faced with” suggests burden, not liberation: a world where persuasion is constant, authority is harder to borrow, and accountability gets fuzzier as audiences fragment. Coming from a centrist, pro-market Republican of the late 20th century, it also signals an establishment figure recognizing that the new populism he could once harness is about to become unmanageable, even for its beneficiaries.
The subtext is power anxiety. Du Pont came up in an era when access to mass attention was scarce and therefore governable: a few networks, a few papers, a handful of editorial norms. Talk radio disrupted those norms but still operated on a one-to-many model that politicians could learn to ride: book the segment, feed the sound bite, cultivate the host. The Internet breaks that transactional stability. It multiplies voices, accelerates rumor, and collapses the time between an event and its interpretation.
His closing pivot - “Suddenly we’re faced with an information age” - lands with a politician’s double meaning. “Information age” sounds triumphant, but “faced with” suggests burden, not liberation: a world where persuasion is constant, authority is harder to borrow, and accountability gets fuzzier as audiences fragment. Coming from a centrist, pro-market Republican of the late 20th century, it also signals an establishment figure recognizing that the new populism he could once harness is about to become unmanageable, even for its beneficiaries.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
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