Walter Mears

"As a society, we're going to come to a conclusion that we can't do without this..." said retired AP Vice President and Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Mears.

The 'this' is newspapers, or generally, high quality journalism.

So what do we do, when all the money dries up, when no one wants to pay the AP, or any wire service, for ground-zero information? Sincerely, we are in for the long haul when news deteriorates into the "revenue-generating system" of Mears' prophesy.

Instead of addressing the symptoms: blogs, polarization and abandonment of hard news. What about the disease itself? Mears suggested that the problem goes as far back as high school civics. Or more importantly, how many Americans don't have this class anymore. Among other things, Civics taught students how to "disseminate information on an objective level."

Without this objective training, adults develop with no concept of fact, as bizarre as that sounds. Instead, people these days more closely portray the villain from Mears campaign anecdote.

While covering an event, a blogger asks Mears who he's voting for. Mears gives the traditional old timer response: none of your business. The blogger then inquired as to how anyone should know whether or not to trust him if he does not take a stand for one side or the other.

Now, this story seems a little ridiculous after thinking about it. Not to doubt its veracity, but maybe the context is a little skewed. Maybe I just have a problem admitting any human being could contain, in her or her skull, logic like that. Logic, which manifests from a brain which is physically identical to mine and every other human being. That is truly terrifying.

But, maybe the real problem is that we only have two choices. If Americans had seven legitimate parties to chose from in an election, and seven unique combinations of political dogma, then the intellectual dissonance might act as a crucible spewing unadulterated fact.

Alternatively, we might just be creating more weak arguments, as Manjoo claims, that would serve as six reasons why person number one is right, as opposed to just one reason in our two-party system.

Mears might have prophesized our doom when he recalled Barry Goldwater in 1964 with his cadres of Goldwater-ites shouting "Don't tell me anything I don't wanna hear." Its evident in his own hometown. Mears spoke about how when he's about town he encounters people who are totally disinterested with knowing the facts.

History's cyclical nature may be at fault. We may be headed towards a time when more than just nutcase Goldwater-ites reject objective fact.