This is not a good thing

The slow-motion demise of the print news media organizations leaves American democracy at risk. But it's in competition with the bad economic news, financial frauds, the ailing auto industry, and the last days of a pathetic Bush administration and it's not getting much coverage. The New York Times notes what's happening:

The much greater loss, the journalists say, is the decline of Washington reporting on local matters -- the foibles of a hometown congressman or a public works project in the paper's backyard. One after another, they cited the example of the San Diego paper's Washington bureau for exposing the corruption of Representative Randall Cunningham, who is known as Duke.

In accepting a Pulitzer Prize for that work in 2006, "we were bold enough to hope that it would be the first of many, but it turned out to be the high point," said George E. Condon Jr., the last bureau chief. "No matter how much great journalism is done by national organizations, they're simply not geared to monitor closely a member of Congress from, say, San Diego, who's not a national leader."

[...]

As bureaus shrink, they cut back on in-depth and investigative projects and from having reporters assigned to cover specific federal agencies.

"We used to cover the Pentagon, combing through defense contracts, and we're covering some of that out of Dallas now, but basically we don't do it anymore," said Carl Leubsdorf, chief of The Dallas Morning News bureau, which had 11 people four years ago, and now has four. "We had someone at the Justice Department, but no longer. We can't free someone up for a long time to do a major project."

Few newspapers travel with the president now -- only three or four on some trips -- where a dozen would have been the bare minimum a few years ago. For those that still participate, the shared cost of travel and the rotating burden of providing pool reports has soared. The Senate press gallery was recently remodeled in a way that left room for fewer reporters' carrels, and no one complained. [...]

"From an informed public standpoint, it's alarming," said Representative Kevin Brady, a Republican from the Houston area, who has seen The Houston Chronicle's team in Washington drop to three people, from nine, in two years. "They're letting go those with the most institutional knowledge, which helps reporters hold elected officials accountable."

An active and investigative press is an essential component of our democracy as recognized by our founders its inclusion in the First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Here's to hoping that the journalists and newspapers figure out how to uphold their responsibility to monitor our government on behalf of citizens everywhere. As much as we bloggers protest when they fail in some portion of holding the government responsible, the bottom line is that their role is an essential part of our democracy.

One does wonder if the greed that infected Wall Street has not also infected the corporate ownership and management of the news media organizations to the point of endangering their existence. When is too much profit squeezed from an organization that can't support it and remain viable in the long term? Who sets the line? Are they thinking about the importance of the press's mission to our democracy? I suspect the answer is no.