"I'd also question just how much better journalism was versus today (although I'm on shakier ground here)." You do well to question. It was all over the place,

"I'd also question just how much better journalism was versus today (although I'm on shakier ground here)." You do well to question. It was all over the place, and frequently awful. Examples that occur to me: Murray Kempton quoted Westbrook Pegler's father as saying that the tone of the Hearst press during WW I was that of a woman running down the street with her throat cut; any number of H.L. Mencken's articles on the failings of the press; Walter Duranty's reports from the Soviet Union. I will add that Kempton, the Peglers, and Mencken were all lifelong journalists. Actually, the competition for advertising is what hurts the newspapers. If suddenly all the classified advertising left Craig's List tomorrow and went back into print, the metropolitan newspapers would be fat again.