There will always be room for mass media in the hours and days after a disaster. I think, however, the verbiage — the “reporting” — will increasingly go away and we’ll be left with just the pictures.

Although I can’t imagine the assassination of Kennedy, or that long horrible day of 9/11 without the media’s talking heads striving to make sense out of the chaos even though they knew — and we knew — that lots of what they were reporting was nonsense. In a way, the television and radio networks are the spider’s web that holds the country together, but only in those times of immediate emergency and peril.

Newspapers just aren’t necessary at all any more, either for information or for on-the-spot pictures.