You've kinda IDed the problem in your post.

caravan70:

As long as the traditional brand names associated with good, trustworthy journalism - The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, et al. retain their credibility with the public,

When I think of the NYT, I think of Jason Blair, the unsourced hit-job on McCain, running abu graib on the front cover for months, erroniously stating the % of homecomming vets with crime/insanity issues, ect.

I'm not even going to get into the bias/politics discussion, but these, like Memogate, are examples of just bad journalism and incompetence, usually uncovered by bloggers.

It's sad when a bunch of random posters on a board (like us) show-up the top news agencies in the country by sometimes being more accurate.

How did that happen? Goes back to the bias issue which has corrupted the editorial sections of these news sources, it seems.