So now John Kerry, who couldn't figure out how to run his own campaign, is going to get the Senate to create a law to prevent the demise of newspapers.
Next week they'll propose a law preventing the tide from coming in.
I've said it before, and will again. I love newspapers, and regret their difficulties as much as any reader. But I've come to disbelieve the notion that if newspapers disappear that journalism will disappear. I've also come to believe that the "press" referred to in the Constitution, will eventually be something that has nothing to do with a printing press.
It's the news that counts. There was a time a few hundred years ago, when a week-old news item was "breaking." But while newspapers can scoop TV news regularly, because TV news is unwilling or unable to do the heavy lifting real journalism demands, newspapers can rarely deliver on breaking news the way TV can. And both are flummoxed by an internet that is instant, can be investigative, but is sometimes way off base.
John Kerry couldn't stop George Bush, nor could the vaunted "press." In the end it was the bloggers who cajoled, and dug, and screamed bloody murder.
