Richard Stengel, TIME?s managing editor, tells us this week:
Information may want to be free, but knowledge and reporting and insight are expensive ? and valuable.
Stengel uses that nugget in an essay designed to bolster the case for reviving the flagging fortunes of mainstream media outlets. I don?t necessarily disagree with his sentiment. But it?s hard to take Stengel seriously when one of his reporters offers the following lede paragraph:
It’s hard to take Republican leaders too seriously when they criticize the recovery plans for the economy; it’s sort of like those geese criticizing the evacuation plans for US Airways Flight 1549. Their critiques seem even more comical when you see their alternatives. They warn that President Obama’s stimulus package will explode the debt–so they want to make George W. Bush’s debt-exploding tax cuts permanent. They say Democratic spending plans are full of pork–then they propose an extra $24 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal equivalent of Oscar Mayer. Let’s just say their idea bank could use a bailout.
If that?s the best ?knowledge and reporting and insight? a media outlet has to offer, no wonder much of the audience assigns it the value it deserves: none.
