Recommended: Glenn Greenwald's August 3, 2008, Salon post headlined "Journalists, their lying sources, and the 
anthrax investigation." It's a return to a discussion of what Greenwald calls "the role the establishment media played in obfuscating the anthrax investigation for so long and, at times, aiding in what was clearly the deliberate deceit on the part of Government sources.
"This is yet another case where the establishment media possesses -- yet steadfastly conceals -- some of the most critical facts about what the Government has done, and insists on protecting the wrongdoers," he contends. "Obtaining these answers from these media outlets is as important as obtaining them from the Government."
CHICAGO, USA -- "If you are a California newspaper editor, you may be shaking a bit more than usual this week," writes Editor & Publisher's Joe Strupp in a January 28, 2008, article headlined "Four Top California Editors Out -- More to Come?"
Strupp said, "The past few months, and last week in particular, have been rough times for Golden State newsroom leaders. No fewer than four top editors of the state’s major newspapers have departed their jobs, three of them 
reportedly against their will."
Here in the Chicago area, Frank Shuftan and Michael Waters, former co-editors of The Southtown Star, which was created from the merger of the Sun-Times Media Group's Daily Southtown Economist and The Star about 11 weeks ago, to save money, revealed January 18, 2008, that they were let go. See "Co-editors' exit sign of tough times" for details.
A few assistant and editorial page editors at the Chicago Sun-Tines have been released. See "Sun-Times lays off 17 reporters, editors."
SmugMug Chief Executive Officer Don MacAskill, who blogs at SmugBlog, has a convincing argument about how some traditional media outlets are on the road to doom because of their approach to online publishing, especially inking. He cites his recent experiences with BusinessWeek and the Los Angeles Times. Writes MacAskill:
Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed for a front page story at the LA Times and a feature spread in BusinessWeek. I have a huge amount of respect for both publications, and was honored to beMacAskill adds:interviewed. And the interviews themselves didn’t disappoint - both reporters were extremely thorough, knowledgeable, and detailed. There were lots of follow-up calls, and both stories were then exhaustively fact checked and reviewed by an army of editors. Everything top-notch publications are supposed to do, they did, and then some.
"Where these august publications fell down was in their online presentation. Someone running these businesses hasn’t figured out that their online business model is advertising. They’ve made it impossible to link to their articles directly (ie, drive money-making traffic to them).I know exactly what MacAskill means. There have been dozens of articles I would have liked to read or link to but I didn't because they were behind a wall or the publication had a no link policy. These articles simply weren't compelling enough for me to subscribe to the publication, just to read them. Also, 99.9 percent of the time I try not to put TBJ readers in a position where they have to register or subscribe to a publication to read one article.
My personal view is that although I may want to read an article behind a wall, the world won't come to an end if I don't read it.
Anyway, if you want to read MacAskill's entire post, see "Why traditional ‘print’ media is doomed." Also see The Globe and Mail technology writer Mathew Ingram's January 26, 2007, post headlined "Media: Still grasping for a clue."
On January 20, 2008, Rupert Murdoch's influential Sunday Times in London published an article headlined "FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft." According to the article:
THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.According to Professor Roy Greenslade, a Guardian of London columnist and blogger, "Harry Shearer, one of the voices behind The Simpsons, has used his own blogging voice to ask a pertinent question. Why has a story broken by the Sunday Times over here about nefarious goings-on in the States failed to take off in the American media?"The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted
conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The article was ignored by the mainstream press in the United States.
"He isn't alone in his concerns," writes Greenslade in a January 22, 2008, post. "Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers some 35 years ago, is even more outraged."
For details and background, see "US journalists ignore Sunday Times scoop on FBI nuclear scandal."
Note: Links added to give readers some perspective on the various players mentioned in the passage above.
Bob Norman at The Daily Pulp takes a look the Miami Herald's plan to, as the Associated Press reported on December 27, 2007, outsource "copyediting of a weekly community news section and some advertising production work to India." Says Norman:
Good thing, as far as the news side goes, the Herald is only outsourcing copy editor jobs. I mean, all theydo is check grammar so that can't be so ... okay, news deskers, simmer down that blood already, I'm just kidding. Copy editors, of course, bring a richness to any newspaper that can't be replaced. The best ones consistently bring new ideas to coverage and find errors that some guy sitting in some warehouse in India can't do."
I agree with Norman on this. I worked with copy editors years ago who caught errors I didn't know were errors. These editors were widely read, kept up with national trends, community events, challenged us on the spelling of names and sometimes demanded to see quotes to ensure correct context. One, a fellow who didn't even finish high school, sometimes knew when a quote wasn't correct.
Above all, they were masters at taking a badly written article and reshaping it, or telling us how to make it better. You can't outsource that to India and get the right result, but I guess you can try.
If you want to read Norman's entire post, please see "The Miami Herald-India Outsourcing Post."
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