I think there is something that can be done, but only a little. On the macro scale, I think truth-telling journalism is under terrible pressure from the greedy corporations who have bought up our newsrooms and ransacked them for profit, with all of the numerous damaging results which I've tried to describe in Flat Earth News. And I really don't see how we will find the political strength to turn that around. Indeed, I think it will get worse. We should protest and maybe we can win a skirmish or two, but we should not kid ourselves about the scale of the problem. However, on the micro scale, I think there are still battles to be fought and won. Every time a reporter says to their news desk "You must give me the time to research this difficult story, even if that does leave you short of a reporter for a while"; every time one of us says to the desk "I've written this story and it's long and it's complicated and it probably won't help to sell a single newspaper, but it's important so you must give me the space": every time we win an argument like that, we hold back the tide of churnalism a little longer. We can do that.

Nick