Frank M. said,”Those who celebrate the slow decline of the print media and the leading newspapers in particular may rue the day when our only source of original reporting are a handful of wire services.”
Sir, you are assumming no better products will arrive to fill the breach. I await the day when I needn’t ask of the original reporting I no longer read in my local paper, “I wonder if this is accurate?” A tangential example, the phrase ‘warrantless wiretapping’ is used over and over to describe what more accurately should be called ‘sigint’, signals intelligence. Because the United States has the sine qua non of cell phone capability, a call from Abu al has Zubrick in Yemen to Abu al has Tzseezic in Pakistan can actually pass through equipment in the U.S. A very different creature than a call from Potosi Missouri to O’fallon Illinois. Which one needs a warrant? Which is a “wiretap”? Until these sorts of mischaracterizations cease in newsprint and electric media “original reporting”, I will cheer these declines. Shoddy products deserve to be driven from the marketplace.