( CNN ) -- When I moved to Washington almost 20 years ago , I subscribed to four daily newspapers . Printed newspapers , that is : on paper , with ink . In the mid-1990s , network news was already a fading phenomenon . But the Washington media elite booked time to watch programs such as `` Crossfire '' at the time they were broadcast . For special events , one might fire up the VCR . But the technology was inconvenient and annoying , and the tapes were awkward to store . E-mail had existed for some time , as had online discussion groups , and other innovative communications technologies . But it was still new that major media companies had ventured online : 1996 was the year that The New York Times and The Washington Post launched their websites . Longer form journalism , the kind published by magazines , still arrived in the mailbox via the U.S . Postal Service . We already had cell phones , of course . We used them to make phone calls . Offline , the past 20 years have not been a period of remarkable technology progress , not when compared with say 1894-1914 ( invention of the radio , the vacuum cleaner , the safety razor , the first plastic and propelled aviation , and diffusion of the telephone , the automobile , electric light , the phonograph and motion pictures ) or 1935-1955 ( penicillin , radar , the first freeway , the first supermarket , the first home freezer , commercial aviation , credit cards and the birth-control pill ) . As compared to the mid-1990s , we have n't seen much progress in the way we get to work or travel to different countries . We heat and light our homes more or less as we did then . Treatments have radically improved for HIV/AIDS , but otherwise transformative medical breakthroughs have arrived only slowly . What did arrive , of course , was the revolution in creating and sharing digital information . In most respects , this revolution has proven a thrilling force for human emancipation . Yet nothing , no matter how beneficial , comes unattended by negative side effects . The digital revolution has played havoc with the profitability of media companies . The troubles of newspapers are notorious , but life is not a lot more comfortable for radio and television companies . The most successful business model yet discovered in this new environment is to reinvent the news organization as a news community . At a time when people are less inclined to join institutions , new kinds of media can offer a community substitute : an environment in which users can have their identities ratified and their beliefs validated . The fastest way to generate such a sense of community is to conjure up threats : health scares , crime waves , wars on Christmas . Isolated in self-selected communities , these threats wo n't be tested very hard against contrary realities . As every roller-coaster owner knows , people like to be scared . Unreal fears are the best of all , since nobody in the end really gets hurt . The faster today 's fears evanesce , the more compulsively must the audience return tomorrow for more . Information has never been more accessible and abundant . And yet so much of that information turns out not be true . And whereas in early terms it was the least informed people who were vulnerable to the grossest inaccuracies , today it is very often the nominally best informed . How you assess economic conditions , for example , turns out be less connected to actual economic events than how you feel about the party of the president . Better education seems actually to enhance one 's vulnerability to partisan distortion : A 2008 Pew study found that Republicans who had completed college were more likely to reject the scientific consensus on climate change than Republicans who had not done so . More sophisticated news consumers turn out to use this sophistication to do a better job of filtering out what they do n't want to hear . This is the environment that made conservatives vulnerable to Cliven Bundy -- and that will , as surely as hucksters follow money , expose liberals to Bundy 's opposite number the week after next , or maybe the week after that . The digital revolution offers the most stirring new possibilities to the human intellect since the invention of the printing press . But as Albert Einstein said after the nuclear revolution : Everything seems to have changed except our modes of thinking . *** . This will be my last column for CNN.com . I am truly grateful for the magnificent opportunity to interact with this vast audience . From here onward , my written work will all be found at my new media home , TheAtlantic.com -- where I 'll do my best to counteract the disturbing trend described above .
Frum : « Digital media have grown , while traditional media shrank . He says people such as Cliven Bundy help media rally partisans , stoking fears . Frum : Even highly educated people are susceptible to partisan falsehoods .