It is their arrogance, It is their capitulation to leftist political ideology, It is their abandonment of accuracy and balance

Journalism isn’t Dead, but Newspapers are

By Alan Caruba
Friday, December 11, 2009

As frequent readers of my commentaries know, I began my working life as a journalist. This, of course, ruined me for honest work!

As a result, I migrated into public relations, a craft or trade that likes to think of itself as a profession, but other than medicine, why would one want to be thought of in the same way as lawyers?

Nowadays, every endeavor with its own trade association calls itself a profession. All one needs is a Code of Ethics that its members can ignore and, voila, you’re a professional.

Journalists think of themselves as professionals and they too have a Code of Ethics as put forth by the Society of Professional Journalists. Let it be noted that I have been and still am a SPJ member for more than twenty-five years and, for much of that time, I also subscribed to Editor & Publisher, a publication that has been around for 108 years.

E&P died on Thursday. It was shut down by its parent company, Nielsen, along with The Hollywood Reporter.

If anything signals a near-death experience for print journalism; that is to say, the process by which the combined talent and efforts of reporters, columnists, photographers, and editors produced a daily portrait of a city, a state, the nation and the world, the loss of Editor & Publisher pretty much says “the times they are a-changing.â€