An excellent read. McQuaid offers a sober, balanced analysis of the state of Washington journalism using the demise of the Newhouse News Service as a touching-off point.

I keep in touch with a bevy of Washington reporters in my work as director of a journalism school and as a frequent writer for D.C.-based publications. I also have been researching this topic for more than a decade. This article captures just about everything I have analyzed or know by contact and experience. The reference to the McClatchy D.C. bureau is spot on. I first observed the disease that has led to the demise of Washington news bureaus when I was a judge two years ago for the D.C. section of the Scripps annual journalism awards ( http://scripps.com/foundation/news/releases/06jan10.html ). Why, I wondered, were so many D.C. reporters covering Iraq, Europe and South America? Then it occurred to me: Those overseas bureaus ... More »

Journalists have provided an effective check on government for centuries. So much so that the French honored them with their own title, the fourth estate. Their job has been seen as educational--providing the information the electorate needs to vote wisely--and investigative, exposing government malfeasance. Both have been obviously waning in recent years and this article rightly sounds an alarm about yet another instance of it.