There is a dynamic that goes wanting in this article. Will touches on it, but doesn't cash in to my way of thinking.
When I was young, I did value the print medium. It was a time when the print media did do investigative reporting. They did it because of their bias, but at least they did it.
Look at the different approaches, the investigations of Nixon vs those of Clinton. With Nixon they scrounged and dug for every paltry clue they could come up with. They even made up fictitious characters and stated they were "Deep Throat". During Clinton's tenure, bonified witnesses were shreded. During Nixon's nobody even demanded who Deep Throat was, much less attacked their character. Thirty plus years down the turnpike, and we still don't know who Deep Throat was, and essentially it doesn't matter.
With the evaporation of credibility, came the evaporation of readership. Will secumbs to the theory that exploding sources of media induced the decline of the print media. I'll buy that to an extent, but if the major paper in my region were unbiased, if it did execute investigative journalism without bias, if it was credible, it would be hitting my doorstep each morning.
It isn't. It doesn't.
People can lay off the decline of the MSM's strangle-hold on the nation as an indication of declining knowledge seeking youth. To an extent that is undoubtedly true. What goes unsaid, is that many of them are quite aware of the bias of the MSM, and just opt out of being lied to.
What this does create though, is an atmosphere where youth can be led astray by lefist propaganda. It has amazed me how some today have bought into the leftist Marxist agenda lock stock and barrel. That is an unfortunate offshoot of remaining MSM influence, and an increasing leftist propaganda effort that captures some young minds and destroys them.
One must recognize though, that the youth are not the only ones affected by this dynamic. Witness a time when the likes of John Kerry could gain a respectable slice of the vote. Even in the 70's, during the hey day of leftist propaganda in the United States, George McGovern was swamped by those who saw him for what he was.
Pitty those in our time didn't see John Kerry as clearly.
Bonified AND shreded?? Ouch, that had to hurt BAD!!
NYT and WP and CBS had it out for Nixon, but not for Clinton. Simple as that!
Excellent insights.
There's another explanation, though, for why newspapers don't do investigative reporting anymore: it costs money...and publishable results aren't assured.
In an environment where circulation is declining, putting pressure on revenues, the accountants are going to squelch any budget requests for "investigative reporting".
Thus, aside from their crippling bias, newspapers are caught in a cost-cutting spiral -- they can't invest in improving their editorial product.