Still True Today
Nick Beaudrot recommends James Fallows:
Before there was Digby, or before The Assault on Reason, there was James Fallows. When you've got half an hour, read his 1996 piece "Why Americans Hate the Media", wherein you will discover that everything old is new again. If I ran the Washington Post newsroom, I'd make every political reporter read this during their first day on the job, and again annually thereafter.
I took Nick's advice, and it's good advice. My initial plan was to read the piece and excerpt some good parts if I liked it, but as I was reading I would up marking up way too many "key" paragraphs and "crucial" insights (this is, perhaps, the sign of a really great article -- a blogger can't write a good post about it) to bother picking. This story by Fallows, also on the media, though looking specifically at the coverage of Monica Lewinksy and impeachment, is also great.
PS, he mentions a discussion in the article that can be seen here.
UPDATE: Jim emails to say that even though the date on the linked American Prospect article here says 2002, it was actually published in March 1999.
Matthew Yglesias is a former writer and editor at The Atlantic.