Through their enterprise and style, they set a journalistic standard
When TIME last chose the ten best U.S. dailies, in 1974, it seemed a buoyant era for newspapers: by publishing the Pentagon papers and exposing the Watergate scandal, they had recaptured the role as journalism's leader, which TV had assumed during the Viet Nam War. They had shown a new zeal for investigating local corruption. And they had begun to adopt technologies to achieve crisp graphics and photos; a growing number were using color.
For American newspapers, however, the past decade has turned out to be both the worst and the best of times. While dozens of big and small city dailies were dying, a new pattern of nationwide distribution was being born, at least for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and a jazzy upstart, USA Today. While the expansion of TV newscasts cut into papers' influence, the print reporter's education, status, wages—and expertise-reached new heights. Although a post-Watergate arrogance infected some journalists, many others learned to operate with sensitivity and restraint. If print journalists were villains in an Oscar-nominated movie, Absence of Malice, they were the heroes in an Emmy-winning TV series that ran five seasons, Lou Grant.
Chains continued to buy up U.S. dailies, large and small, during the past ten years, but despite fears of bland homogenization, the average local paper generally grew better. The biggest group, Gannett (85 dailies), has shifted emphasis from moneymaking boosterism to enterprising reporting. Old-fashioned women's pages have given way almost everywhere to trend-conscious life-style reporting. There has also been a sharp upswing in the quality of stories about the arts and popular culture, especially television. In addition to their own. resources, moreover, daily editors now have a broader range of syndicated news and features to choose from, including stories from reporters at eight of the journals that made this year's list of the ten best (the exceptions: the Des Moines Register and the St. Petersburg Times).
One of the dailies that TIME named among the nation's ten best in 1964, the Cleveland Press, folded in 1982. Still, a measure of the basic health and diversity of American newspapers is that only three of the dailies on this year's list, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post, were selected by TIME 20 years ago. Among the credentials that TIME took into account: imaginative staff coverage of regional, national and foreign issues; liveliness in writing, layout and graphics; national impact achieved through general enterprise, command of some particular field of coverage or a track record of training top-rank younger journalists.