Cheney's code of silence hurts White House

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

“By now, everybody except the shrillest partisans is sick of the Dick Cheney hunting accident story.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Vice President Cheney shot a man on Saturday. The public learned of it on Sunday. On Friday, the Dallas Morning News editorial board finally gets around to commenting on it. Even they recognize just how late they are to the scene. They introduce their editorial almost with an apology, admitting that everyone is sick of hearing what they are finally going to write about five days after the news broke.

Right there you have, in a nutshell, why newspapers are doomed. They are dinosaurs in today's world of 24-7 television news channels, talk radio, Internet news, blogs, podcasts, email, instant messaging. The printed news cycle - gather, write, edit, print, deliver -- can never keep up with electronic media. By the time most new media are relegating the story to the historians, the DMN is finally weighing in on the subject. Newspapers are becoming stale news outlets. They aren't any better as history books.