Woodward and Bernstein-reporting the hell out of a story that would change America. You remember Woodward and Bernstein. They were the guys played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in the movie. We all walked a little taller in those days-at once proud and humbled to be a part of such a noble calling. Today, journalism's just a business.
News is just a product.
Now I'm hardly the first guy to lament the parlous state of the present. That's because journalism has always been a business. When readers of the New York Herald in the 1830s complained that the ads for a snake-oil salesman named Dr. Brandreth were vulgar and distracting, Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett responded tartly. Business is business-money is money. We permit no blockhead to interfere with our business.