You don’t have to look only to the most recent events to see the shortcomings of the press. During much of the Vietnam Era if you wanted the straight facts on the War you had to seek out a tiny little independent weekly newsletter by I.F. Stone.
Having consolidated their smaller competitors out of existence, the declining newspapers can’t use the same trick that they used in the face of broadcast journalism, that is exploiting “local advantages in providing information to readers and connecting advertisers and consumers in a city.” This opportunity has been sucked away by the Internet.
In other times of media change, old media found new, albeit smaller niches in which they thrived. When video killed the radio star, radio said “I shrink, therefore FM.” In a similar manner, newspapers must reinvent themselves to survive. By this I don’t mean to find new business models or sources of revenue to continue doing the same old thing. To retain the mantle of the “Fourth Estate,” the old guard media must rediscover what reporting is really about. Maybe the example of I.F. Stone’s Weekly from forty years ago can serve as a model. Stone suggested that if you can’t compete with the media, go small, go independent:
"Reporters tend to be absorbed by the bureaucracies they cover; they take on the habits, attitudes, and even accents of the military or the diplomatic corps. Should a reporter resist the pressure, there are many ways to get rid of him... But a reporter covering the whole capital on his own — particularly if he is his own employer — is immune from these pressures."
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