Reprint: Newspapers’ Essential Strengths, by David Carr, NY Times, Monday, May 4

Reporters like to think of themselves as essential to the national well-being, which might be just one more measure of how out of touch we are, but journalists are not the only ones who are suggesting as much.

Speaking Tuesday in Washington at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation meeting, the day after the business magazine Portfolio closed, Mary L. Schapiro, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, suggested that because federal regulators cannot be everywhere at once, experienced reporters constitute additional critical boots on the ground.

“Financial journalists have in many cases been the sources of some really important enforcement cases and really important discovery of practices and products that regulators should be profoundly concerned about,” said Ms. Schapiro. “But for journalists having been dogged and determined and really pursuing some of these things, they might not be known to the regulators or they might not be known for a long time.”

A current accounting of the news business — grim and grimmer by the day — suggests that there may be a subsequent bear market in accountability as well. The day before she spoke, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed that for the six months ended March 31, newspapers, which employ the vast share of paid watchdogs, were down an average of 7 percent in circulation from the previous year, a steepening decline that foretells additional layoffs in a business that has already had its share.

On Friday, it was announced that The Washington Post lost $53.8 million in the first quarter of the year, and perhaps more ominously, that revenue in its online properties dropped 8 percent.

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