Son, they shook

Perennial blowhard Frank Rich enters the 3rd stage of grieving as he attempts to prolong the demise of his paycheck at the NY Times in his latest op-ed piece.

Yes, journalists have made tons of mistakes and always will. But without their enterprise, to take a few representative recent examples, we would not have known about the wretched conditions for our veterans at Walter Reed, the government’s warrantless wiretapping, the scams at Enron or steroids in baseball.

Tons of mistakes is a massive understatement and so his "but" is offensive. So called journalists were LATE on Walter Reed, warrentless wiretapping, Enron and the steroid mention a joke. They were also completely absentee on torture, WMD intelligence, the run up to Iraq and countless other stories. Embittered, he concludes:

By all means let’s mock the old mainstream media as they preen and party on in a Washington ballroom. Let’s deplore the tabloid journalism that, like the cockroach, will always be with us. But if a comprehensive array of real news is to be part of the picture as well, the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end we will get what we pay for.

I won't mock the old mainstream media, I just don't buy it. And, that's just the point isn't it? Americans no longer pay for the self-appreciating "stenography" pushed out by a newspaper industry that thinks us too stupid to realize what they do is no longer important or relevant. I'll take the "bloviating" blogosphere as Rich calls it. For not being news gathering, they've taken the lead and been uncompromisingly vocal and right about a very many issues in recent memory. The MSM has been relegated to the follower position and in this economy I'd rather just save my money and prefer they just shut up.