Mainstream Journalism is dead. It was a slow, quiet death. The last breath went almost unnoticed. Stephen Colbert, in his roast of President Bush at the White House Correspondents dinner this year, joked about it when he told reporters they were just there to write down what the White House told them to say. He added they should take more time off: “Write that novel you’ve got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know, fiction.”

We have reported previously in this commentary that the “Media is Going to Hell.” Now it has DIED and gone to hell. Most of the intrepid reporters are retiring. There aren’t many spines apparent in the latest collection of newbees in the business.

Much of this is explained in detail by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ben Bagdikian in his book The New Media Monoply.

Also, Robert McChesney covers the implications of America’s new wealthy media in his book Rich Media Poor Democracy.

We covered additional information on the loss of journalism in our commentary entitled "How the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Screwed Bill Moyers", and Bill covers it well in a speech entitled “Take Public Broadcasting Back."

The sad truth is that journalism has been syndicated, upscaled, standardized, packaged, and sensationalized to the point it is no longer recognizable as journalism. As early as the 1970’s reporters were being told to add more entertainment to their stories. Journalist were subjected to marketing test sessions where viewers were hooked up to equipment to see how much various newscasters made them sweat or have faster respiration.

For a time, print reporters righteously blamed all of this on broadcast media, and held themselves out as the untainted spring of journalistic purity. Now the big papers, and all of their righteous reporters, belong to the big companies.

If there is any good news in all of this, it is that the web and the availability of inexpensive video production has opened a world of consumer media reporting. We are sharing information with each other with unprecedented speed and bulk. Unfortunately, that too may be threatened by Congress and their teamwork with big business. (See our commentary entitled “Big Brother is Trying to Clamp Down on Internet Freedoms.")

Just for a moment during Hurricane Katrina we thought some reporters might be seeing how powerful could be the proper exercise of the influence of the press. That brief light went out in a hurry when the Washington spin machine got a handle on the Katrina issues.

Americans must begin to demand responsible, brave, and accurate reporting from our news sources. We may never bring good, big journalism back to life, but we can make it hard on those who celebrate her demise.