Why the Media Is Taking So Long to Die

I participated the other night in an oddly formal, anglophilic, Oxford-style, for-and-against-the-proposition debate on the topic of (you guessed it) the mainstream media. I was on the side arguing (you guessed again) that it should be buried as fast as possible.

My side, with NPR host John Hockenberry and Politico founder Jim VandeHei, resoundingly lost.

This seemed surprising, if not inconceivable, because mainstream media is being buried by the stampede of Americans who've deserted it without a second thought, who you think would have voted for us.

But the audience for this debate, which will be (or perhaps has been already) aired on NPR and on Bloomberg television, was comprised of the last living readers of and believers in old media. Our cause was perhaps not helped when I began the evening by looking out over the crowed, and observing, with what I thought was some hilarity, that everybody was very old.

The team on the other side of the proposition, defending the value and purpose of mainstream media--David Carr, a nemesis of mine from the New York Times, Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editrix and benefactress of the Nation magazine, and Phil Bronstein, who has something to do with the San Francisco Chronicle (but who is best known for having once been married to Sharon Stone, which was the last moment of glamour in the newspaper business)--were a maudlin and sentimental bunch.

Continue reading on newser.com