NUMBER 61

An elegaic essay by Richard Rodriguez:

In the growling gray light (San Francisco still has foghorns), I collect the San Francisco Chronicle from the wet steps. I am so lonely I must subscribe to three papers—the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle. I remark their thinness as I climb the stairs. The three together equal what I remember.

The deflation of professional journalism has, among many other things, resulted in a sharp increase in airtime for hatchet-jobbers (i.e. consultants – people ‘whose goal is not to educate, but to win.’

So says The Atlantic’s Mark Bowden.