RALEIGH – It has become a cliché to observe that American political life has become hyper-partisan, wincingly shrill, and impoverished by insularity and circularity. On the one hand, goes this argument, members of the political class checks their Blackberrys for the latest posts on their favorite blogs while hurrying home to watch their favorite pundits recycle their favorite talking points and issue their favorite Bush or Clinton insults. On the other hand, normal Americans who don’t think much about politics on a daily basis check the latest posts on Anna Nicole and the NCAA tournament while taking in at best a superficial and simplistic account of the day’s news from a brief radio update or local television newscast.

A cliché is often just a boring truth. I have seen conflicting data on the subject, but my gut tells me that the gap between partisan political elites and the American public has been growing. In part, I think, it’s the result of a favorable trend towards choice. We have hundreds of TV channels, thousands of major websites, and hundreds of thousands of small sites and blogs that may cater to our particular, often narrow or local interests. We have enormous libraries of audio and video on demand. Even regarding old-fashioned print, there have never been more books and magazines available. This is wonderful.

And it’s dreadful. It’s dreadful to the extent that many people no longer have much in the way of common cultural experiences – except for the Super Bowl, the Oscars, and, uh, Anna Nicole – or opportunities to see people exchange very different ideas about life, religion, and politics in a respectful and thoughtful manner.

I don’t mean to denigrate the unique contribution that the new media have made to political discourse. Take blogs, for example. Good bloggers act as trusted news editors for readers with whom they have developed a relationship, supplanting the previous hold that newspaper and broadcast editors enjoyed over the agenda-setting function. That’s been a healthy competition that has often served readers well. Blogs have also identified some great new talent in political punditry, policy analysis, and media criticism. And the technology has given millions of Americans the chance to participate directly in the discourse by posting comments or starting their own blogs.

The John Locke Foundation has significantly expanded its blog offerings over the past two years, adding four new local sites with reader comments to our preexisting Locker Room site, which features crosstalk among JLF scholars, analysts, and friends. The five blogs together attracted about 42,000 visits and 90,000 page views in March, accounting for between a fourth and a third of all JLF web traffic (depending on which measurement you choose). Since March 2005, traffic at JLF blogs has shot up by between 650 percent and 850 percent. There is obviously a strong demand for short-form comments, criticism, linkage, and reader commentary on issues here in North Carolina, and we are among the organizations seeking to satisfy it. At the national level, several JLF folks contribute to major blogs. My regular posts at National Review’s The Corner require only a few minutes of my day, but they sometimes generate a huge percentage of my non-junk email (well, some of the reader responses are also junk, but not of the hot-young-teen-from-Nigeria-has-a-once-in-a-lifetime-offer variety).

But even as my colleagues and I joyfully produce – and consume – political blogging and other features of the new media, we recognize their limitations. There is still a critical need for general-circulation media that expose readers, listeners, and viewers to a wider spectrum of ideas and opinions. There is still a critical need for in-depth, expensive, and time-consuming reporting. There is still a huge benefit to getting people physically together in a room, inviting a speaker to get things going, and then hosting a lively question-and-answer session to subject ideas to the to-and-fro of spirited debate.

We’ll be announcing some new cooperative ventures later in the year to encourage politically active North Carolinians to exit their comfort zones and grapple with challenging ideas and controversies. The goal is to model how to disagree without being disagreeable.

Yes, that’s another cliché – another boring truth.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.