Jeffro
The thing I sometimes wonder is – would the Watergate scandal have had the same result in an age where print journalism is not a dominant form of media? Was it the determination and patience of Woodward/Bernstein and their editors that brought about the story in a way that is not possible now?
I think the Woodwards and Bernsteins of the future are working at sites like Talking Points Memo and Politico.
I think Watergate was a story that wanted to get out, and print journalism was the best way to do it at the time. For Lewinsky it was the Drudge Report. Internet news has only gotten more sophisticated since then.
I haven’t seen anything on the internet yet that has taken the place Seattle Times or PI. For Seattle level news, they’re still the place to go to (I don’t count TV news since most of it is garbage). But I also feel that something will spring up in the absence of both of these papers. Maybe The Stranger will get bigger and better.
When I think about how I first got into West Seattle Blog (which I first read about on the PI online), I loved it because it gave me news that was of too small an interest to be covered by the papers and TV, but it was news that was often more interesting because it was so close to home. The professionalism of the WSB team surely went a long way too.
With my discovery of WSB, I definitely feel more connected with my neighborhood. Sadly, with the demise of the big papers’ sites (I haven’t been a print subscriber for over a decade), I feel like I know less of what’s going on in the general area. Maybe the next great thing for Seattle news will be a site that aggregates all the great work currently done at the neighborhood level. Someone should get to work on that.