Many think the secret of Fox' dominance of news is political. A generation brought up on the myth that an objective press is biased to the left, then given a right-wing Pravda, sees the latter as "fair and balanced."

That's a small part of the story. Identifying a niche and serving it is as old as the magazine business. Older. It's as old as Poor Richard's Almanack.

The real secret is much simpler. The "network" is actually a studio. Few bureaus, no big investigation team, no bench, little support. Who needs writers when most hosts can wing it. It's talking heads. It's radio economics.

No, it's blog economics, or Blogonomics.

If you can get the same revenue, or even more revenue, from Blogonomics as running an actual news operation, you're going to drive a more expensive news operation into the ground. This is why CNN tries constantly to throw air to its affiliates, local TV stations with their "it bleeds, it leads" mentality. They want to get some benefit from resources, they want to show they're still big, and they're getting nowhere with it.

The "live remotes" also cover up a sad truth. CNN is cutting back, becoming more-and-more like Fox, because it can't afford to spend big bucks for no payback when someone else is spending little bucks for big payback. That's not politics, it's just business (or as I prefer to term it, bidness).

And want to know the secret behind the secret?

That's what most of the blogosphere does. Fox News and the blogosphere are, from a business model standpoint, very very similar.

I don't have a news budget. I can't go off for a week to do a story. If I can't get the data I want with a phone call, an e-mail, and a Google search, chances are I'm not doing the story. I can't afford to.

But if there are millions of people like me, then it's possible that pictures and interviews and first-hand accounts are going to be available from someone. And they will be shared. That's what happens on scaled community blogging sites of all kinds.

And that's the future.