The word is out that we’re embarking on a new golden age of journalism. … It’s exciting, and dangerous. The danger is that these changes won’t usher the old standards and goals of journalism into the future so much as relegate them to the past. …
The information ecosystem today is a vast edifice of commentary built upon an ever smaller foundation of hard news. The travails of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are so handsomely filling the ample airtime and website space available for commentary and analysis that viewers and readers may forget that the fact that made the story into a nationwide sensation — the email from a Christie aide calling for “traffic problems in Ft. Lee” — was unearthed via traditional good-government reporting by a traditional local newspaper, the (Bergen County, N.J.) Record. CONT.
Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times