News Is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century : Ballantine : 9780345425287 : 0345425286 : 20 Apr 1998 : LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT "When screaming headlines turn out to be based on stories that don't support them, the tale of the boy who cried wolf gets new life. When the newspaper is filled with stupid features about celebrities at the expense of hard news, the reader feels patronized. In the process, the critical relationship of reader to newspaper is slowly undermined." --from NEWS IS A VERB NEWS IS A VERB Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century "With the usual honorable exceptions, newspapers are getting dumber. They are increasingly filled with sensation, rumor, press-agent flackery, and bloated trivialities at the expense of significant facts. The Lewinsky affair was just a magnified version of what has been going on for some time. Newspapers emphasize drama and conflict at the expense of analysis. They cover celebrities as if reporters were a bunch