When Current TV launched as a cable television network and companion website in August 2005, it set out to attract an elusive audience: the 18- to 34-year-old age group that notoriously avoids traditional news outlets. The objective was to develop programming that not only would interest young people, but also would include them in the process by inviting them to produce their own informative videos.

At the forefront of this effort is a small team of young, enterprising journalists that Current calls its Vanguard. Instead of trying to compete with the established network news operations, the Vanguard team fans out across the globe, traveling light, usually with two-person crews bearing small, digital video cameras and a common desire to cover stories others aren't telling. Despite the conventional wisdom that the attention span of young viewers can be measured in nanoseconds, the Vanguard team digs deeply into the stories it pursues and produces carefully edited pieces that often run many times the length of news stories on other networks.

While the United States focused on its own campaign for the presidency, an exercise repeated every four years for more than two centuries, Current TV producers Christof Putzel and Mike Shen traveled halfway around the globe to chronicle the birth of the world's newest democracy. Nestled in the Himalayas between India and Tibet, the kingdom of Bhutan was often called the last Shangri-La, a mythical Buddhist paradise largely cut off from the outside world. For more than a thousand years, this tiny kingdom had survived in splendid isolation. The country had no roads, no electricity, no motor vehicles, no telephones, and no postal service until the 1960s. Even these days, guided by a policy of "Gross National Happiness," it's a place that evokes a feeling of being frozen in time. But Bhutan's beloved king recently became the first monarch in history to initiate his own abdication and hand over power to the people, a surprising move that left many Bhutanese uneasy. The tiny nation had never known self-government and feared that democracy could be the beginning of the end for the last Shangri-La.

Putzel and Shen ventured to Bhutan a month before the election to pose some of the questions vexing the new, reluctant democrats: Why insist on self-government when few people are clamoring for new leadership? Can an ancient culture preserve its precious heritage and modernize too? Will opening to the outside world let in more forces of evil than the people and government can manage?

Told with compassion and humor, "Lost in Democracy," is a touching and entertaining look at the Bhutanese tentatively trying to join the modern world without losing their soul. It premiered on Current TV just a week after Bhutan's historic election, providing a timely, in-depth look at an event that was hardly covered by mainstream media outlets. The online screening on the website provided space for a lively discussion about the role of democracy in cultures outside the United States, an indication of the power of new media to amplify and enhance a provocative, unusual story, and engage a new generation of viewers.