As newspapers cut 1,000 jobs last week, Americans are getting their sense of the world less and less through human eyes and ears than from TV cameras abetted by well-groomed mannequins gushing over an endless flow of images.
Talking heads on cable and bloggers online parse and pick away at what the cameras see but there are fewer and fewer reporters to find out what’s hidden by using such old-fashioned skills as observation, questioning and legwork.
Where is the tipping point at which “news” becomes all opinion all the time about “facts” supplied by self-interested sources?
Newspapers are drowning in red ink even as Americans depend more heavily on what they do but don’t pay for the information they get from them digitally and advertisers don’t cover the costs of allowing them to continue providing it.