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If it is impossible, as Smith noted, to prevent "people of the same trade" from contact with each other, that is doubly true of journalists whose very reason for existence is communicating with everyone. And in the primitive times when dinosaurs walked the earth and the Internet didn't exist, it certainly seemed that sharing of content by the various journalistic institutions was "necessary." That situation no longer exists. Internet "aggregators" now link together stories of interest from all points of the compass and tailored to particular tastes.

The Associated Press has had the pernicious effect of homogenizing the newspaper business by promoting whatever "new thing" has happened most recently and thereby detracting from the importance of enduring truth.
Acts.17 [21] (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)
If everything is important, then nothing is important. Novelty journalism proposes that everything new is important, and the direct implication of that is that little attention need be paid to truths which haven't changed in millennia. Or since 1776, or 1788.

They're beating a dead horse.

Who wants to wait for the news once a day when you can get it in real time with 24-hour news channels and the public Internet?

My daughter was shocked to learn that there was a time when I listened to "all news all the time" radio stations. Her shock was due to the fact that ever since she was aware of what was going on, I have treated "the news" as a commercial for a product I wouldn't buy on a bet. Which is exactly what it is and, after cogitating on the question for decades, I think I can explain why.
I have always gravitated to the editorial pages of newspapers (which is why I latched onto the Wall Street Journal in the 1970s when Robert Bartley was the editorial page editor). Even a liberal editorial page is preferable, generally, to the "hard news" sections of a typical newspaper - even one with a good editorial page. Coincidentally - or not - the newspapers of the founding era, and up to the Civil War era, were pretty much like the editorial pages of today's newspapers. Those newspapers, lacking a source of news which, in principle, any ordinary citizen could not know before the paper printed it, were more about the opinion of the editor than about "the news." A cause, and an effect, of that situation was that "newspapers" of that era were usually weeklies rather than dailies.
But with the advent of the telegraph and the Associated Press newswire, the newspaper business was transformed. The expense and exclusivity of "the wire" meant that newspaper offices had the latest news from all over the country, and ultimately from all over the world, to which the general public could not be privy until the local newspaper printed it (or, if the local papers did not print it, until the word seeped out by word of mouth and letters and so forth, just as the case had been with all news in the pre-AP days). So the AP gave the newspapers an aura of knowledge, provided that the veracity and objectivity of the reports on "the wire" was taken for granted. That aura of knowledgeability was a valuable (and expensive) franchise, and one to be nurtured assiduously by the newspapers.
To optimize the value of that franchise it was only logical that the newspapers would conduct a propaganda campaign to the effect that reporters - whether local reporters working for the individual newspaper or remote reporters working for different members of the AP, or employed directly by the AP itself - were objective. To put it bluntly, membership in the AP put you in cahoots with all other members of the AP. The members of the AP, who were famously fractious and independent before the AP, had in fact jumped together into a blender. With the result that if you've seen one news report, you've seen them all - within the AP there cannot be truly independent reporting.
The irony of a propaganda campaign promoting one's own organization as being "objective" is that "taking one's own objectivity for granted" is an awfully good definition of subjectivity.
Today, of course, the AP newswire is pretty much a dead horse. On the web you can read reports from distant places by individuals - people you don't know, apart from whatever reputation they may develop by reporting independently from their own locale and their own individual perspective. FReepers, for example. But precisely because of the precariousness of their situation, the membership of the AP is lashing out with a vengeance. McCain-Feingold, and the Obama presidency, are results of that.
Congressional Hearing on the Future of Newspapers Set For Thursday (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)
Editor & Publisher | September 23, 2009 | Joe Strupp

The shield legislation is "a solution in search of a problem," says Kyl. "There is no demonstrable need for this. It's not as if a big dagger is hanging over anybody's head."
So why is the bill moving toward enactment? One reason is the major media have been lobbying furiously for the legislation, which has lingered in Congress since 2006. What's odd, though, is that the press has scarcely covered the progress of the measure, perhaps because it amounts to a special favor granted by politicians. Also, the White House decided an enhanced privilege would be a nice present for the press.

When the First Amendment was proposed and ratified, newspapers were mostly weeklies, and some had no deadline at all and just went to press when the printer was good and ready. That was because the newspapers of the day didn't have privileged access to a "newswire," so they were as much about the opinion of the newspapers' printers as anything. So the newspapers of the pre-Civil War period were famously opinionated, and the public was little given to assuming that any of them were objective.
That changed with the advent of the telegraph and the aggressive monopoly distributer of news to newspapers, the Associated Press. Since the Civil War, newspapers have been dominated by "straight news," and the opinion portion was, nominally, relegated to the "editorial page" ghetto. But that did not eliminate any perspective from the news - it promoted the perspective that the bad news of the moment was more important than the 2000 year old good news of the gospel. Far from promoting freedom of the press, the AP is a borg, incorporating "presses" into itself and homogenizing them. A press can be free or it can be associated - not both.
And an "associated press" which promotes privileges for itself is not a friend of the liberty of the people.
The Facilitating Leaks Act
Weekly Standard | January 4, 2010 (print) | Fred Barnes

The plain fact is that "the press," which was famously a cacophony of independent voices before the Civil War, transformed itself into the notoriously homogeneous - and notoriously "liberal" - "media" of today. And I confess that I puzzled relatively fruitlessly over the timing and causes of that transformation for quite a long time. After decades of consideration of the matter, I happened upon a book about the use of the telegraph during the Civil War and, in the reading of it, was struck by a blinding flash of the obvious. The telegraph had a tremendous impact on journalism.
I investigated, and learned that the telegraph really started to affect journalism with the founding of the Associated Press (initially the New York Associated Press) in 1848. Newspapers had routinely picked up stories from other newspapers before then - but the AP newswire systematically revolutionized the sharing of news among its members. Not to mention that the AP itself writes a lot of news itself, and always has.
In the transformed newspaper business, the players had to be in an expensive news service - and the AP worked very aggressively to assure that you had to be in the Associated Press news service. It aggressively pushed each new telegraph line to sign an exclusive deal with the AP for the transmission of news - to such an extent that in 1945 it was found by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The members of the AP naturally had to maximize the value of their expensive AP newswire, and the value of the newswire depended on the credence which the public assigned to the AP stories which the members published. This motivated the members of the AP to promote the idea that journalists - not just their own reporters but all reporters - were objective.
The hegemony of the AP did not escape notice and criticism, but the AP argued that its members were famous for not agreeing on anything, and the AP was therefore - you guessed it - "objective." But believing yourself to be objective is the essence of subjectivity; the only way to attempt to actually be objective is to rigorously analyze the reasons why you might not be objective.
Claiming to be objective is the very opposite of making a serious effort to be objective, and is the mark of the propagandist. And yet belief in the objectivity of AP journalism - the result of a century and a half of unremitting propaganda - is endemic in America. And yet American "conservatives" - we are actually liberals according to the historical meaning of the term - have difficulty understanding why they find successful political argumentation against socialists to be difficult! The fact that we operate under a banner - "conservatism" - which is quite different from our actual liberal attitudes is illustrative of the larger phenomenon that we conduct our political discussions not in English but in American Newspeak which is imposed on us by AP journalism. I have my own Newspeak-English dictionary:

objective :
reliably promoting the interests of Big Journalism. (usage: always applied to journalists who are members in good standing; never applied to anyone but a journalist)

liberal :
see "objective," except that the usage is reversed: (usage: never applied to any working journalist)
progressive :
see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").
moderate:
see "liberal." (usage: same as for "liberal").
centrist :
see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").

conservative :
rejecting the idea that journalism is a higher calling than providing food, shelter, clothing, fuel, and security; adhering to the dictum of Theodore Roosevelt that: "It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena (usage: applies to people who - unlike those labeled liberal/progressive/moderate/centrist, cannot become "objective" by getting a job as a journalist, and probably cannot even get a job as a journalist.)(antonym:"objective")

right-wing :
see, "conservative."

public :
government

Associated Press journalism is conceited and jealous/hypercritical of anyone who works to a bottom line: the businessman, the military man, the policeman. The interest of Associated Press journalism is in promoting itself and in alternately flattering and frightening its audience in order to attract attention. That is why AP journalism assigns negative labels to businessmen, policemen, et al - and positive labels those who are critical of them.
The Associated Press has produced a hypertrophied journalism - and hypertrophied AP journalism has produced hypertrophied government.
Journalism and Objectivity
The Right to Know
Why the Associated Press is Pernicious to the Public Interest
The Market for Conservative-Based News
Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate
4 Advances that Set News Back

Free Speech Is the Only Antidote to Mass Delusion

Yes - but actually, it is insufficient in the age of mass communications. We need, we must have, ~~a free press~~ free and independent presses.
In fact, SCOTUS is wrong in calling money “speech.” Talk is cheap - it is printing presses, ink, and paper which cost money. And don’t question the connection between freedom of the literal printing press of the founding era and freedom of the Internet and cable - yes, and over-the-airwaves broadcast - of today.
Article 1 Section 8.
The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . .
implies that the framers anticipated that printing press would be improved upon.

Amendment 9 -
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This directly rebuts the notion that the First Amendment is a ceiling over our liberties - it is intended only as floor beneath them. The framers did provide a means of adjusting the unregulated advance of technology on the press, but it would be really hard to get an amendment to the First Amendment ratified.
The reason we are troubled by “the media” is simple; Adam Smith condemned the source of the problem three generations before it arose:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Wire service journalism originated in 1848 with the founding of the New York Associated Press - soon renamed simply, “the Associated Press.” The members of the AP - any and all wire services are the same - are in a continual virtual meeting of “people of the same trade.” The AP newswire has been going for well over a century and a half, and the inevitable “conspiracy against the public” arose before it was a half a century old.
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
That motive operates on all journalists; it is their reason for existence. Thus they make the absurd claim of their own objectivity based on their mutual-admiration-society AP membership.
The effect is that journalists are free to promote the idea which is the exact opposite of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous dictum, “It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . .” And what is the most pithy expression of the opposite of that dictum? Elizabeth Warren announced it, and Obama and Hillary! echo it:

You didn’t build that.
Which is obviously cynicism - and socialist dogma.