This is not a philosophical question. For intellectual debate newspapers offer meagre pickings. It is simply a quality issue.
So what are the benchmarks against which newspapers should be judged?
One might be accuracy. Newpapers contain a lot of inaccuracies. When they are all only available online perhaps, Wiki-like, more erudite readers will be able to correct the howlers that are now routine in newspapers. But for now we have to be cautioned that we cannot believe even the most innocuous 'fact' in newspapers, as it will actually be what some graduate trainee half-remembers from a lecture in which they were seriously hung over.
Secondly there is originality. However, the best and most original new newspaper names are people they've poached from blogs etc. So essentially they are parasitic on talent broken elsewhere.
Another grouse of mine concerns a famous columnist. The woman shares my name. This is not a coincidence, nor are we related. She is an evil identity-thief! But I'd better not say too much about that.
Basically I'm disappointed. Once upon a time we had the Fourth Estate. Now we have knownothings and loblollymen.
