It is a belief that no matter how good your work, how thoroughly reported and influential, it isn’t going to matter in protecting your newspaper. Because of the revenue declines and cutbacks, the mood of proprietors and managers, on the whole, is near panic. Outstanding work by their staffs, the newsroom has become convinced, isn’t going to make a difference in the outcome of their institution. The effort at morale-building in the stream of front office memos announcing departures, the cheerful exhortations to survivors to do great work, only adds to the cynicism that pervades.

News people are by nature skeptics, and given to grumbling. One of their missions is to find fault. Self-criticism in newsrooms is standard, and so is defensiveness when the criticism comes from outsiders. None of these characteristics are at issue. The problem is that the prevailing mood of a declining and deteriorating industry is so pervasive and so discouraging that it reinforces itself. “What’s the point?” is a debilitating attitude, and it is very difficult to reverse.

But Osnos adds a hopeful note:

Reporters do what no one else can in documenting wrongdoing and negligence. By definition, what they choose to write about is what becomes news and determines how the rest of us are informed. If advertising and circulation will not support reporting in the years ahead, other ways to do it will have to be found; think of publicly supported radio, no longer dependent on the federal government because of underwriting and individual contributors.

He also cites the emergence of new enterprises to support traditional reporting, including ProPublica, the investigative project funded by philanthropists. He concludes with his own silver lining: "The tradition of entrepreneurship in the news business is strong."