The Big Picture and the Closeup

Print journalism is not disappearing; it’s just being put on retainer (and a short leash) by private interests.

It is tempting to view the stories told in [Eric] Boehlert’s two books, one chronicling the failure of the mainstream media to report the news and the other revealing the success of the blogs in doing so, as being parts of the same story. Maybe the mainstream media would not be failing from a business perspective were they not, most of the time, failing from a news-reporting perspective as well. Maybe the blogs would not be succeeding, albeit under their mostly profit-agnostic criteria, were they not beginning to seize the standard of bona fide reporting falling from the grasp of the mainstream media as they tumble lifeless upon the field of economic battle.

Laudator Temporis Acti (“One Who Praises Bygone Times”) Horace, Ars Poetica The Times, they are definitely bygone, or, if not bygone, doggone near bygone. The Seattle Times and the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Los Angeles Times and The Roanoke Times and The St. Petersburg Times and all the other Timeses, Intelligencers, Posts, Standards, Newses, Courants […]