A friend referred me to an unfamiliar website which I’m now compelled to share.

The “Mort Report” is a project of Mort Rosenblum, a journalist whose bio reads like a bit of international adventure fiction.

From the site’s “About” link:

After 39 years of covering global stories for AP and several years editing the International Herald Tribune in Paris, I am now happily independent. MortReport is a labor of love, with a lot of help from my friends: old-style correspondents of hard-won experience and young ones with fresh eyes. We report first hand, with sources we have learned to trust. We base analyses on non-alternative fact.

The problem today is not fake news, which is easily debunked. It is well-meant real news that is too often distorted by omission or confusion. Karaoke journalism lets anyone step up to the microphone, even if they don’t know the lyrics.

Stories that matter – climate chaos, clashing civilizations and the rest – are all linked, and we connect the dots. The usual who-what-where questions are not enough. We add historical continuum in broad context: the why and what next. Sometimes, we just have fun.

My friend recommended today’s post commenting on the end of Gannett as an independent media chain with its takeover by Gatehouse. It’s a measure of how much the newspaper world has changed in the last three decades. The company that seemed to epitomize the power of Big Corporate News, the newspaper chain that reporters loved to hate, bites the dust.

Here’s a taste from today’s Mort Report.

Newspapers that once informed America are still with us, adapted to digital delivery, but most are shadows of their former selves. They replace solid up-close reporting with thumb-sucking at a distance or word sausages made up of news bits from slipshod common sources.

Now GateHouse is about to swallow Gannett and use its familiar brand name. America’s two largest chains plan to merge into a Frankenstein’s monster of more than 260 dailies and 300 weeklies in 47 states. That, they say, will “enhance quality journalism.” Talk about blowing credibility right off the bat.

Gannett’s flagship USA Today and other big dailies already give short shrift to the world beyond oceans that insulate America. GateHouse ruthlessly slashes staffs and uses cheap generic “content” to cushion advertising like so much roofing foam.

Anyway, there’s lots more. This is a great site to add to your regular reading list.