More balanced than this author's usual work in other publications, this New Yorker piece examines the fate and future--if there is one? -- of the vanishing American newspaper...

The article is a slightly long, but thoughtful look at newspaper and news organizations as they have evolved. The shift of the media from reporting progressive perspectives to being largely regressive is noted. The economic engine that will be followed as paper printed newspapers seem to be in decline is not clear; the history here shows there is drastic change.

Decent recap of the American Lippmann-Dewey debate on whether journalism should be top-down or bottom up. Most "citizen editors" here will know I tend to agree more with Lippmann on this point and this author timidly concurs. His silence on plausible solutions to the funding crisis killing investigative reporting is deafening. He could have pointed to NewsTrust for example or regulatory measures such as the fairness doctrine and required non-profit status in return for government funding, which is what the BBC and CPB already exemplify.

My problem with articles of this sort is realizing that I will not be alive on the date that is predicted and I will not be around to see whether it happened. One, I won't be able to see it happene; two, it is a reminder that my window is closing. But, with the rapid change in technology, particularly in the communication field, and with the apparent acceleration of news apathy, the end of at least print media may come much sooner than predicted in the article.

This lengthy opinion and analysis piece has considerable merit. It is written from a left-wing viewpoint (saying that the major media became less liberal in the 1970s goes against every objective study published since 2000, all of which show how the media have a strong liberal bias and slant). But it offers some useful perspectives on the problems of the traditional media, in an article that is sufficiently long to cover the situation. One flaw is that the catastrophic faults of ther New York Times in earlier days are not mentioned (think Duranty, Matthews, Halberstam, all of whom lied repeatedly in the Times, helping cause the deaths of tens of millions).

This article provides a broad perspective on the current state of the newspaper business, including historical context.