Walk into the newsroom of any major paper and you’ll see, hard at work, hordes of gainfully employed Americans with no fear of losing their jobs.

These people are repo men. The journalists are the ones cowering under their desks, churning out article after article about how newspapers are dying.

Things used to be better. In the golden days of journalism (March 7-12, 1905) newspapers were advocates of the people. “Muckraking” reporters wrote stories about which factory violated safety codes or what conglomerate used slave labor or whose meatpacking plant put rat parts in hot dogs. “More disgusting hot dog stories,” golden era editors were always bellowing.

Reporters who covered these beats were the Michael Moores of their time, only skinnier, because they were terrified of hot dogs. They produced a product people wanted, and were so satisfied with their jobs that no one ever left to start a blog. Read the rest of this entry »