Helluva post.
Excellent insights.
There's another explanation, though, for why newspapers don't do investigative reporting anymore: it costs money...and publishable results aren't assured.
In an environment where circulation is declining, putting pressure on revenues, the accountants are going to squelch any budget requests for "investigative reporting".
Thus, aside from their crippling bias, newspapers are caught in a cost-cutting spiral -- they can't invest in improving their editorial product.
Daughty one and you both have insightful posts....For instance the Dallas Morning news runs stuff from the AP and the NY Slimes...both stinking to high heaven with media bias. There is starting to be some backlash and letters to the editor about the slimes articles....which I doubt will do any good. They will know when I stop my subscription it will be an indication that they are in big trouble with their lazy reporting because I have read the paper daily since I could read...