Where The News Comes From

Another reminder of the indispensability of daily journalism, from Jeff Greenfield:

In Philadelphia, entrepreneur Brian Tierney and a consortium of wealthy investors bought the 180-year-old Philadelphia Inquirer and the tabloid Daily News nearly three years ago. They've placed a multi-hundred million dollar bet that the papers can adapt and survive, even in print.

"We had a series recently on the EPA and the Bush administration; it took several months to do it, it cost a quarter of a million dollars to do that. I can't do that with two bloggers," Tierney said. "I can't do that the way all-news radio in this market does it, where they basically buy our paper and then paraphrase our stories every day. We are the originators of the investigative work that needs to be done."