David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo makes an interesting, if oversimplified, argument about the right wing's online presence:
I'm often asked why the right doesn't have a muscular online news presence that mirrors the reporting-intensive, fact-heavy websites that have emerged on the left. The explanation is complicated, but one part of the answer is very simple: Most of the right-wing "news" sites have no interest in being journalists. That's not what they're about and that's not what they see as their primary function, which is advocacy.
On the one hand, it's readily apparent that the right's webinating is often very different from the left's. Talking Points Memo itself has become a very good source of investigative reporting, having largely dug up at least one scandal with legs: the Bush firing of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons. The right's recent focus on Obama and birth certificates and its obsession with kerning from a few years ago seem like missing the forest while examining the trees with a magnifying glass. That does seem rather common. Are there efforts that match Talking Points Memo that I'm missing?
I think Kurtz is painting very broadly, but there are definitely differences, as visiting the major competitors on each end of the political spectrum quickly reveals. What do those differences mean?
