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We have got to make sure there is proper independent scrutiny and accountability for people in the press, just as there should be in any other industry where things go wrong. But let's not try and think it is for politicians or governments to tell people what they stick in newspapers. That is deeply illiberal.

Perhaps the biggest problem in journalism is the cult divide between journalists and corporate owners.

The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news... and it's not entirely the media's fault, bad news gets higher ratings and sells more papers than good news.

God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.

I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.

I think we'll always have newspapers, but they'll lose influence.

There is a long history of newspapers being doomed. They were doomed by radio. They were doomed by television. They were probably doomed by the telegraph way back when.

People are worried about what's going to happen to journalism - and they should be. Every day, the blogosphere is getting better and print media is getting worse; you have to be an idiot not to see that.

I think it's this congenital problem with journalism that we oversell the difference we make. We make small differences.

The worse the newspapers speak of the world, the better I feel.