Detroit News Cliff Gliding with the Times and the Globe

Mark Steyn has the nerve to criticize one of our hometown newspapers for failing to report on “the Saudi shill Chas Freeman,” whom the nation only just escaped having confirmed as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. You know what I say to Steyn?

The man makes a good point. . . .:

Don't read all about it! [Mark Steyn]

I'm glad to see the back of the Saudi shill Chas Freeman, but I wonder what Mr. and Mrs. America will make of it tomorrow morning, reading for the very first time how the "Outspoken Former Ambassador" (as the AP's headline has it) was scuttled by a controversy their newspaper saw fit not to utter a word about.

As far as I can tell, the only papers in America to so much as mention the Freeman story were the Wall Street Journal, Investors' Business Daily, the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Augusta Chronicle,and the Press Enterprise of Riverside, California.

But if you rely for your news on the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Detroit News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, or the Minneapolis Star-Tribune — just to name a random selection of American dailies currently sliding off the cliff — the end of the story will be the first time you've heard of it.

The U.S. newspaper has deluded itself that it's been killed by technology. But there are two elements to a newspaper: news and paper. The paper is certainly a problem, but so is the news — or lack of it. If you're interested in news, the somnolent U.S. monodaily is the last place to look for it.
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