The Cagle Post -- Column -- Susan Estrich -- The Old Media

"The truth, whether you want to admit it or not, is that what drives public discourse today is still the work of the nation's top newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and, yes, even my much snickered about Los Angeles Times. If they can't do their job, they won't be the only ones who suffer. All of us who depend on their reporters and editors will suffer, and so will the public discourse about important issues.

Talking about the news is easy. Finding it, digging for it and separating what's accurate from what's not are laborious, time-consuming and often unrewarding tasks. Newspapers, even the best of them, make plenty of mistakes. I've been their target often enough to know that. But in this information age, we need them and the professional standards of reporting and editing to which they aspire, even if they do not always meet them." (Emphasis Mine.)