Hinterland Diary

The future of old-school journalism . . .

Most of what matters about the coming media age is already being decided outside of traditional newsrooms, on YouTube and countless other Web sites, or in the advertising agencies that calibrate Google search results with the mouse-clicking habits of young consumers. Perhaps Google or its ilk will find it profitable or desirable to fund independent, expert foreign correspondence; or to support investigations of corporate and government power; or to train the sort of journalists who feel free to call out their employers' pay packages on the proverbial front page, although there are no signs of this yet. Or perhaps the Sulzbergers and the Grahams can adapt their public trusts successfully to the new technologies. And even if their efforts fail to become profitable these families might still preserve their newsrooms' independence by converting them into nonprofit foundations, similar to what the Poynter family did with the St. Petersburg Times, in Florida.

From "Read All About It," the comment in this week's New Yorker on the takeover of the Wall Street Journal by media baron Rupert Murdoch by Steve Coll