This is no longer the case, either for literature or for print journalism. Those who read newspapers and novels now get their primary information about the world from the TV news and the radio. There are exceptions, of course. The success of that excellent, lively novel Primary Colors shows that novels can just occasionally still lift the lid on a hidden world more effectively than the finest reporting. And of course the broadcast news is highly selective, and newspapers provide far greater breadth and depth of coverage. But many people now read newspapers, I suggest, to read the news about the news. We read for opinion, attitude, spin. We read not for raw data, not for Gradgrind's "facts, facts, facts, but to get a "take" on the news that we like. Now that the broadcasting media fulfill the function of being first with the news, newspapers, like novels, have entered the realm of the imagination. They both provide versions of the world.

Perhaps this is clearer in a country like Britain, where the press is primarily a national press, than in the United States, where the great proliferation of local papers allows print journalism to provide the additional service of answering to local concerns and adopting local characteristics. The successful quality papers in Britain一among dailies, The Guardian, Times, Telegraph and Financial Times—are successful because they have clear pictures of who their readers are and how to talk to them. (The languishing Independent once did, but appears lately to have lost its way.) They are successful because they share with their readers a vision of British society and of the world.