"People seem quick to say they can do without newspapers and reporting" No they want the shit for free just like everything else. At the moment free is available cause someone else is paying. I can read the local paper at 0.65 per day or I can go to CNN or other online news agencies and look it up. However if no one is reporting then there will be nothing online. The system will basically reset itself and there will be a smaller investigation team. We bailed out the financial industry which we should not have should we bail out the print industry as well?

If people wanted News papers then they would buy them, few are buying them so few want them. I fail to see the problem.

This is why we need newspapers.

More accurately, this is why we need investigation and information dissemination.

Andrew Cuomo is suing the Healthcare providers in NY for using their subsidiary to underreport "reasonably and customary" charges for medical procedures, thus inflating the unreimbursed amount and our co-pay.

The New York Times was doing something important while that was going on, I'm sure. Just like they were when Spitzer used the NY State Police to surveil the Republican leader of the State Senate. They didn't find Client number 9 either. Investigative reporting, from the greatest paper in the world. Be sure to check out that Pulitzer that Walter Duranty earned. Ask to see the Jayson Blair one.

Sometimes the papers do something right. That doesn't mean they are unbiased or right or deserving of my money.

I understand there are whole law firms whose entire existence is dedicated to finding small overcharges of customers by large businesses. Any idea how many scams like the one you identify is uncovered by newspapers as opposed to such law firms?

My guess is the lawyers, with a direct financial interest in the matter, do a much better job at finding such instances. (I also suspect they find such instances even when the facts are not there, but that is a different issue.)

"When people use that term, there's usually or often bias in the other direction -- overvaluing those who don't work for media organizations."

If they do not buy newspapers, and do not pay bloggers, seems they "value" them equally: that is, not much at all.

Amy, if a food manufacturer were consistently putting out a product that made people sick, would they be allowed to continue "as is"?

If a courier company consistently delivered packages late and damaged, would people continue to give them their business?

If an engineering firm consistently erected bridges that collapsed, would they be allowed to continue their work "as is"?

My PROBLEM with the MSM is that their "News" is no longer N-E-W-S. Most every story I read has a significant bias to it, which makes me immediately distrust the writer and the story.

Editorials can be slanted any which way the writer(s) want but not news.

The day that journalists once again decide to follow professional ethics then I will support newspapers again. Right now they're neither professional nor ethical.

"Then your article explained the situation. Health insurers had been overcharging."

So, I have to sift through pages of crap to get to something worth reading, and then see if it applies to me, and then see if I have to do something to change it (which this person didn't seem to actually DO anything). It was probably changed by a lawsuit, not by the article.