The circulation of newspapers is down 10 percent in the past decade alone. But they're also irrelevant. Only half the public buys the paper. Only half that do read it. Only half of those who read it find anything in it to remember.
Journalists are worried about much more than sensationalism, though certainly that is growing.
The excessive coverage of Diana's life and death echoes the excessive coverage of the murders of Ennis Cosby and JonBenet Ramsey, or the O.J. Simpson, John Bobbitt and Tonya Harding cases. But tabloidization is a symptom, not a cause, of the problems. What is really going on in the so-called serious press today is a crisis of conviction, a philosophical collapse of faith inside newsrooms in the purpose of journalism and the meaning of news.