Virtually all the trends that matter are making a mockery of the industry's ritual incantations about the values and virtues of a free press in a free society.

But what we know, we who are either observers of a business we once were in and loved, or are people within it now, our business as a whole, when it is not obsessed with the business of business, is eaten up with a form of cultural conservatism which is truly amazing. Indeed, more often than not it is eaten up with pure reactionary-ism.