My own father, also a newsman, held Mencken very high. So, the interview kept returning to the theme of newspapers. Finally the interviewer asked a question that doesn't occur to us today. A fine restaurant goes downhill when it tries to compete with the lucrative hot-dog stand across the street. Newspapers, he says, do what they do very well.
TV is a new technology, utterly different from newspapers.
It won't replace them. Instead, it will go off in new directions. If news people let themselves be suckered into TV, they'll surely lose the ability to put out good newspapers. Mencken's disdains often led him astray, but not here. Forty-five years ago, we thought TV would replace the papers.