Nice lede from New Yorker article

The subject is journalists, of whom I'm not that interested.

Charles Dickens, a journalist of such Victorian energies that he managed to write some fiction on the side, was a keen observer of human vanities. Of a minor figure in "Our Mutual Friend," he wrote, "Mr. Podsnap was well to do, and stood very high in Mr. Podsnap's opinion." 

In our time, journalists have been made to realize that they are widely viewed as Podsnaps: privileged peacocks, stubbornly unreflective, "happily acquainted" with their "own merit and importance." 

Reliable outfits such as the Pew Research Center report that the news media, which, in the middle of the twentieth century, was among the most highly regarded institutions in public life, now dwells in a dank basement of distrust, alongside the members of the United States Congress.

As I write this, I am sitting at a bankette in an upscale pub in London, with single individuals—a man to my right and a woman to my left—on either side.  Both appear to be crying or in some pain. They are both likely somewhere near my age. We are quite a threesome!!!