David Michael Sandler

David Michael Sandler is a historian and writer who has written about the presidencies of John Kennedy and William Jefferson Clinton.

Web-only journalism officially graduated to the Beltway's radar screen April 25, when Bill Clinton kicked off the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner by saying: "I just want to know one thing: How come there's no table for Salon Magazine?"

The president has good reason to stump for Salon these days. Thanks to the work of reporters Murray Waas and Jonathan Broder, Kenneth Starr's key Whitewater witness David Hale has suffered a serious blow to his credibility, and the independent counsel himself has been forced to fend off conflict-of-interest questions from the Justice Department. It has turned out to be crucial investigative reporting and news important for us to know.

The Wall Street Journal editorial pages dismissed Salon as "an Internet magazine... paid circulation zip." The reporters have been profiled by Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, and attacked in the very pages of Salon by regular columnist David Horowitz.

"Now I get my calls returned a lot easier," Broder said.

Broder, who worked overseas from the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia to the end of the Cold War, has spent the 1990s reporting in Washington for the San Francisco Examiner and National Public Radio, before joining Salon full-time a few months ago.

"At the beginning... people thought it was a hair-cutting magazine," he said. "Some people though it was the national magazine for the former Sri Lanka."