"But those giant presses and barrels of ink and fleets of delivery trucks were never what made newspapers invaluable."

Just one sentence (though another one titles this post) about newspapers and journalism from Mark Bowden's article in The Atlantic this month, entitled "The Story Behind the Story": "What gave newspapers their value was the mission and promise of journalism – the hope that someone was getting paid to wade into the daily tide of manure, sort through its deliberate lies and cunning half-truths, and tell a story straight."