Free Press as Government Watchdog - In Decline

Take into consideration the reduction in press corps especially in coverage of state and city governments. Then ask yourself how many people do you know that are younger than you read a daily printed newspaper. My answer is very few. Most people in their 20's and early 30's retrieve their news from a webpage and spend on average a fraction of the amount of time that print subscribers invest.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. -Thomas Jefferson, 1787.

I worry that politicians, more so on the local and state level, are operating these days with less scrutiny from the press corps. Blogs have taken up some of the slack, but not nearly enough and the average readership of a blog pales in comparison to a major metro newspaper. With less and less dedicated, professional journalists I really do worry that government power and corruption can more easily avoid rigorous scrutiny.