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The traditional news model is collapsing. It suffers from two defects. The "news object" can no longer be given sealed attributes in newspaper backrooms. The days when the press was the news object foundry are dying. Second, the news industry is suffering from its lack of analytic cells, which are standard equipment in intellgence shops.

Is collapsing? It done collapsed a long time ago. Just ask CNN.

As for its previous standing? It was never that competent to begin with; not in the last 40 years. As for the last 20 years, the word incompetent comes to mind.
Who goes into "journalism"? Even as far back as the 50s the word elicited contempt and laughter. Here is a "profession" that required no knowledge whatsoever other than the ability to speak and write one's own language, something most intelligent 4-year-olds can handle with no formal education whatsoever.
Think of the gaffes in recent documovies: reversing latitude and longitude and being blissfully unaware of it.

Now, couple that with a tendency from these same Einsteins to manufacture facts if real ones don't come along, and doing it incompetently and you have our keystone-kops scenario.
Only difference is, these are becoming criminal acts. And criminal penalties should follow. Ignorance in combination with stupidity should carry serious jail time.

I’ve been involved with desktop publishing software and scalable software fonts (as opposed to hot lead type) almost since their inception. I’m a former West Coast editor of a popular computer magazine for a now-orphaned computer, the Atari ST/TT. I also co-owned a software publishing firm, CodeHead Technologies, for whom I designed and laid out packaging and manuals for more than a dozen products (in addition to developing most of those products, using 680x0 assembly language). We used a combination of DTP and traditional typesetting techniques for these jobs, and I cut my teeth on some of the first serious DTP software ever created for personal computers—including Aldus Pagemaker and Aldus Freehand on the Mac, and less recognizable titles available for Atari computers (anyone still using Calamus or Pagestream out there?). My software company also marketed a word processing program (Calligrapher, written by a developer in Britain) that had the ability to import and use Postscript Type 1 fonts. And I had early experience with some of the dinosaur-like dedicated word processors that were available in the 70s/80s. I’m not boasting like this just to pump up my lizardoid ego; it’s to let you know that I have an extensive background in these subjects—and when I tell you that there’s no way the CBS News documents were created on any machine available in 1972/1973, I ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie.

..but, but, but.... you are not Dan Rather !

Sorry to echo Jim Lehrer, but the blogworld is changing the way news can be generated and packaged in fundamental ways. Rather is the biggest dinosaurs to be hit so far, but there can be little doubt that the oldline hegemony is in the crosshairs and headed towards extinction.