Experts in a professional fields have been writing books for hundreds of years. How is anything fundamentally different now? The shortened cycle? Experts in

Experts in a professional fields have been writing books for hundreds of years. How is anything fundamentally different now? The shortened cycle? Experts in various fields have written guest columns for newspapers since before the U.S. declared independence. Tabloid and marginally amateur newspapers previously outnumbered the established publications. When new towns and cities were formed in the American Frontier, often a printing press was brought with the first businesses. Your argument appears to follow from the premise that "MSM is bad" and then seeks justification in a just-so story of the old days that isn't accurate. I'm not defending modern journalism's accuracy. I'm disputing your assertion that the consolidated journalism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are the default. On the contrary, they are abnormal with respect to the rest of American history.