To cover something like the war in Serbia, reporters need access to the Pentagon. One critical or negative report and they lose both access to the Pentagon and their job. So the public is fed government pap. Newspapers then lose credibility. I thought we learned our lesson about government reports from Vietnam.
TV is partly to blame, but TV was only a jab compared to what the Internet is doing to newspapers.
Web-based news is all many of us read. There's a bigger pool of sources and the entire world can be accessed for reports. There are still newsmen to be found here and there around the world. Real news junkies read more news than ever, they just don't read it from American newspapers. And as for those pathetic feature articles that newspapers fill space with especially on Sunday, one vanity Web page is more interesting.