Why We Still Need Big Media

The San Jose Mercury News’ recent series, “Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice,” is a brilliant and powerful demonstration of what Big Media do at the very finest. Rick Tulsky and his colleagues at the Mercury News should be enormously proud of their accomplishment. It should lead to some serious reforms in a criminal justice system that can go so wrong, sometimes ruining the lives of innocent people in a single-minded pursuit of convictions — at the cost of true justice.

Is this project the last of its kind at the Mercury News? The impending sale of Knight Ridder may ensure that such efforts fall victim to investors’ preference for high profits at the cost of genuinely pathbreaking journalism such as this.

We need great journalism, and we especially need the kind of work this series represents.