They in turn are dispatching reporters to cover subjects of national policy interest that were too often getting back-burner treatment even before the presidential sex scandal broke. With renewed commitment, or just gut instinct that they were chasing the wrong horse, news executives seem intent on restoring their products as facilitators of civic awareness and responsibility. For journalists, the real Y2K bug has nothing to do with computers shutting down on Jan. 1, and everything with the fact that 2000 is a presidential election year. A greater worry, however, is that editors and news executives will conclude that readers and viewers don't care about policy, based on focus group research, readership surveys and, most important, the bottom line.
Television news suffers the same fate.
Suffice to say, it probably has. It's another thing to obliterate it entirely. A day later in The Washington Times, the conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts might have hit on the answer for why this is so. An electorate that turned off is not likely to get suddenly energized just because the media show a renewed interest in everyday, pocketbook issues. Or at least one would think.