Slingshot victories

Whatever the outlook for journalism's Goliaths, the future for WORLD looks bright | Joel Belz

Illustration by Krieg Barrie

"Don't worry." The thoughtful counselor was trying to pick up his friend's spirits. "Cheer up! Things could be worse."

"So I cheered up," the friend reported. "And sure enough—things got worse."

Almost certainly, from my perspective, the fellow needing help was from one of the nation's biggest newspapers (like The New York Times), or one of its long influential magazines (like U.S. News & World Report), or one of its major broadcasting networks (remember Walter Cronkite?). Throughout the mainstream media, things are very bad indeed. Calamity, disaster, and ruin are not just the story line mainstream journalists are reporting. They've become the story of those businesses themselves.