I think it's the hierarchies between the journalist and the consumer that deserve lower (not low) pay. The journalists are doing all the work, they should be p

I think it's the hierarchies between the journalist and the consumer that deserve lower (not low) pay. The journalists are doing all the work, they should be paid more. The problem with journalism is that the customer of the journalists' publishers are not the readers of the articles, they are the advertisers that fill the publication. It is this mindset that has pushed news from one of providing information to the reader to one of providing entertainment. Journalists then work for entertainment companies, not news companies -- there is a big difference. The Economist is a news company. The evening news is entertainment. This means news competes with every other form of entertainment and news just doesn't doesn't stand a chance. Why? Because the news is supposed to have a standard. Look at what happens when standards are lost (cough, fox!). Look at how the Daily Show is more popular than the evening news -- because it is more entertaining, because it doesn't pretend to strive for ethics. These lies are transparent and the consumer knows the news is not the news, but one big advertisement for prescription drugs, politicians, and mega corps. The journalists aren't making the decisions that are shaping this theatre, the bosses with the big wallets are and they are controlled by the advertisers. How many journalists have been told to modify their stories to be more appealing to the ad market? How many embellish to win more viewers? The downfall of journalism has less to do with changing technology and more to do with faltering ethics and diminishing focus on the end user -- that is, the reader or the viewer -- and more focus on the advertising they sell. When the news industry begins to understand the product they are selling, things will change. For the record, the ad based revenue model is failing on the internet too. Are we going to blame the internet for that?