Woe Is Media, Pt. 973
The Christian Science Monitor just printed an article that opens with this line:
The past year has been the most miserable in the history of modern American journalism.
Maybe it has something to do with hyperbolic nonsense masquerading as facts! (Later, we learn that newspapers have recently had "their credibility battered as never before"). This decline, of course, is annual (why, it was just 1999 when David Halberstam informed us, with great sadness, that "The past year has been ? the worst year for American journalism since I entered the profession forty-four years ago"). In actuality, the cost of publishing continues to plummet, new publications (even daily newspapers!) are being launched every day, and the free press is spreading like a virus in closed societies like Iran. Time was, media critics (most famously, A.J. Liebling) believed that journalism's health and proliferation were inextricably linked. (Link via Jeff Jarvis)
