Ink-Stained Retch: The media's fawning coverage of State of Play will make you run screaming...from your newspaper - Reason Magazine

"The media's fawning coverage of State of Play will make you run screaming ... from your newspaper"

Interesting think piece. Will this be the last major movie about newspaper journalism?

It will not be many years until children read old books and ask their folks "What's a newspaper?", as I once asked my parents, after having heard an old song, "What's a nickoleodon?"

I'll go farther than that. I'll say that if an exterrestrial visited us today, he would not be able to understand why newspapers exist now. They deliver the news slower and in less depth than the internet and cable news stations, plus they harm the environment before they are created, as they are being created, and after they are discarded. They exist for the same reason that human beings have an appendix: they are vestigial. In about 20 years, most of the people with the ingrained newspaper habit will be pushin' up the daisies, and the dwindling customer base will have disappeared completely. And network newscasts cannot be far behind.

Having said all that, I don't think it's necessarily a good thing. Inevitable - yes, good - not so much. Both newspapers and network news departments make some effort at objectivity. The media that replace them - talk radio, the internet, and cable news - are unapologetically biased. Replacing the old media with the new media essentially substitutes screaming harangues and outrageous spin for quiet impartiality (or alleged impartiality, if you prefer). Our generation had Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow to present the news in sentences ending in periods. The generation to mature in about five years will have had Limbaugh, internet flame wars, MSNBC, and Fox News - all presenting with exclamation points. That transition has to create some problems, especially when it comes to our ability to discuss controversial topics with civility and reasoned discourse.