All the gossip that fits

David Sirota smacks the abandonment of journalism by journalists:

Rather than investing in the valuable steel and concrete of hard reporting, national news outlets began printing the most worthless kind of commercial paper -- rumors, personality profiles and other such speculative derivatives that consumers could find elsewhere. News, in short, mimicked finance: Just as Wall Street made bets on bets with credit default swaps and then watched investors bolt, print journalism mass-produced gossip about gossip, and now sees its audience flee.

Nobody cares who reports on Britney going commando. Any lucky blogger can handle it. You either have pictures or you don't.

If you can report facts, you actually have something of value that can't be replicated without effort. That used to be the competitive advantage of big media, but they trashed it.