Washington Post ombudsman Michael Gertler, after reading several bad-news-for-newspapers stories in his own paper, defends the beleaguered medium.
For more on the bashing, please see this blog posting, newspaper angst.
Some excerpts:
... The ombudsman's perch is an interesting spot from which to watch all this angst unfold. The attacks on the mainstream media, and the attempts to undermine them, are indeed escalating. More and more e-mails have a nasty, threatening, ideological tone. The number of people who claim they are canceling their subscriptions because they don't like the coverage of this or that is increasing.
So I, too, worry about the future of newspapers. They are central to an informed citizenry, and their special role cannot be filled by competing media.
I worry about the self-inflicted wounds that diminish the trust that should exist between newspapers (and television news networks) and the public, and about the increasing numbers who are not reading newspapers at all. ...
... This decline probably also says a lot about newspapers not being sufficiently compelling in the day-to-day lives of readers. It may signal a growing public disengagement from more in-depth news, or perhaps that more and more people prefer not to be confronted with reporting or commentary that challenges their views. ...
Gertler talks a bit about bloggers, but ultimately comes down on the side of the home team:
... The difference between newspapers and some of today's instant-delivery alternatives is that newspapers make use of time -- time for trained and experienced journalists to report, time for editors to get between reporters and the public, time to think a little longer about things.