When I got out of college in 1983, I was a newspaper reporter for seven years. In those days, we had copy editors and fact checkers. If we came across what we thought was a good story beyond the daily grind, we had to pitch it to an editor, who pitched it to another editor, and on and on, depending on the resources the research would take. When we got done writing an article, it would get scrutinized by at least two editors, often more. Assumptions stated, facts backed up with documentation, sources proven. The strength of the economy meant lots of ad dollars, which meant lots of revenue for the paper. There were resources to support enterprise journalism. My papers sent me across the country on research trips, even to Africa for two weeks during the Ethiopian famine.
The issue from my perspective is that the internet killed the economics of the publishing business. "Faster and cheaper" became the mantra. Resources dried up. The time to produce thoughtful and well researched articles evaporated. The need to explain your research and justify conclusions before publication was a casualty of cost cutting. The public expected the content on the internet to be free. I went from newspapers to the aviation press (ah, THOSE were the days!) but the problem was even worse there.
Another dynamic is that less skilled/disciplined people went into journalism because of the rise of the celebrity journalist. When I was a reporter, you NEVER saw phrases like "... told me in an interview." We were forbidden from injecting ourselves into the story. Now, that is routine. In addition, the removal of the gatekeeper function of editor has democratized publishing, but as a result the quantity of garbage being published has exploded. Newspapers and TV news are filled with poor grammar, factual errors, false assumptions, opinion. No thank you.
