I happened across two very interesting perspectives on the state of modern journalism. One I came across thanks to Crooked Timber, the other I've momentarily forgotten where I saw the story linked.

http://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/07/murdoch-wants-to-charge-people-to-read-what-the-pr-industry-spews-out/

Guardian reporter Nick Davies won the Bristol Book Awards for Flat Earth News which included his look at "Churnalism" -- journalism by recycled PR and newswire:

'Churnalism’ study claims news mainly PR and wire copy

01 February 2008

National newspapers’ home news is mainly recycled wire and PR copy, claims research from Cardiff University - but the Mail and the Independent hit back

Some 80 per cent of news stories in the quality UK national newspapers are at least partly made up of recycled newswire or PR copy, according to new research.

This was one of the findings of a study by Cardiff University’s journalism department which also claimed that fewer Fleet Street journalists now produce three times as many pages as they did 20 years ago.

The research was carried out for a controversial new book investigating Fleet Street by Guardian journalist Nick Davies.

It also claims that the majority of home news stories in national newspapers are mainly made up of PR and/or wire copy. The research claims that the proportions are: The Times, 69 per cent; The Daily Telegraph, 68 per cent; Daily Mail, 66 per cent; The Independent, 65 per cent and The Guardian, 52 per cent.

Slamming what he calls “churnalism”, Davies says: “Now, more than ever in the past, we are likely to engage in the mass production of ignorance because the corporations and the accountants who have taken us over have stripped out our staffing, increased our output and ended up chaining us to our desks.”

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=40123

Meanwhile, Walter Pincus reflects on "Newspaper Narcissism" in the Columbia Journalism Review.

There's much laudable and useful for a historic perspective, but then there's this:

Part of the explanation for this lack of knowledge is the emergence of the idea, among reporters in Washington and perhaps elsewhere, that we should avoid socializing or developing friendships with public officials -— even those who are our peers.

As a result of this artificial separation, public figures remain one-dimensional to many journalists; they have no wives, children, or lives outside their professional positions.

Not to me. After fifty years of living and working in Washington, I’ve had personal friends in Congress, on federal court benches, in high government positions, even in the White House. We should be measured by our work, not by what we say or do elsewhere. I certainly hope that as witnesses to wars, civil-rights riots, peace marches, famines, and terrorist events these past decades, we all have developed opinions which at times we may discuss or even argue about—or we just are not human.

Such experiences make us better observers and thus better reporters. With more and more PR peddled as news, journalists need the experience to sort out what really is news, and to deliver it in context.

http://www.cjr.org/essay/newspaper_narcissism_1.php?page=all

I just don't agree. There was no sort of close relationship to any officials needed in order to tell us that the selling of the Iraq war & occupation in 2002-2003 was utter, utter bunk.

I'm frankly mystified by a seasoned reporter's conclusion that the problem with the lack of substantive, measurable quality with regard to reporting on major U.S. issues and governmental action is a lack of social attachment between individual journalists and government officials. Further, there's a degree to which it is wrong to care about an official's own interpretation of what they're doing if it doesn't match a more important evaluation of what they're actually doing.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any chroniclers of the insider, anthropological / ethnological account of power in governance and business -- I just don't see how you conclude that it does improve coverage in any way I give a damn about.

Use the case here -- did the existence of personal connections, in and of themselves, assist Rosen with the production of quality news and analysis? Far from it.

Pincus is a stellar journalist, and he has produced incredibly valuable intellectual products. His personal relationships maybe assisted him with insights and leads. But it was his actual journalism -- that which was printed, the product, the thing that our eyes can see and read and interpret and reflect upon -- that was of value.

If every aspiring member of the courtier class of news producers was a truly great reporter committed to the producing the best of journalistic product, I wouldn't care whom they knew well. But that's not what we have. We have a social class of climbers to insider national policy membership, and many of those climbers seek as an effective route the putting on of the identity of "journalist".

These people, in other words, have to prove first that they can report what needs to be reported and investigate what needs to be reported without the insider social class connections to Washington power that they desire; then, if out of that grow real relationships, fine, who cares, right?

Instead we get the opposite. People who seek to be accepted as insider courtiers first, and then producing things which they think are "journalism" because they have put on a costume labeled "journalist".

Anybody can put on a costume, but it doesn't turn you into that which the costume represents. A firefighter outfit doesn't make you a firefighter. A Spider-Man suit doesn't mean you can walk on walls. And calling yourself a "journalist" doesn't mean you produce an actual journalistic product, it just means that you're proclaiming that that is what you wish to do, any more than an academic degree means that anything you choose to produce is considered to be worthwhile scholarship.