This week, I'm ready to consider whither—and thankful that Mark Bowden laid out the current morass in The Atlantic. Bowden argues that the journalist's search for information has been replaced by the ideologue's hunt for ammunition, thus debasing not just the profession but public debate.

Back in the glory days, sez Bowden, print reporters delved through public records, dug through clips, and dove into interview after interview "searching for those moments of controversy or surprise that revealed something interesting about the subject." Contrast that with today's online "journalists" who comb the web looking for dirt. Case in point: Sonya Sotomayor' problematic quote that a "Latina woman" might have better judgment than a "white male." The excerpt, from a 2001 speech, received wide media play almost as soon as President Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Bowden explores how the quote was found, spread and manipulated by the Right. Then he looks at it in context—something most of the legacy media failed to do given constraints of time, resources and budget—and discovers that it had a wholly different meaning than the one propounded by Sotomayor's conservative critics. In our post-journalistic world, concludes Bowden, "the model for all national debate becomes the trial, where adversaries face off." He finds this lamentable; politics should be a endeavor to seek common ground for the public good. Journalism, which once facilitated that process, now upends it (New York Times columnist Bob Herbert makes a similar point).

I don't agree that the good old days were all that good—but that's another story. Still, I will second Bowden's point that  the search for ammo has eclipsed the search for info. It's symptomatic of the polarization and the sensationalization of news, and it's in direct opposition to the nuance, depth and complexity that mark most important stories. That's especially true when religion crosses into domestic politics or international news.

An alternative? In another article, The Atlantic offers a surprising (at least for many American readers) suggestion. Robert D. Kaplan explains "Why I love Al Jazeera." Yes, the Arab television network is more sympathetic to the Palestinians than the Israelis, but it also has the hustle, broad gaze and deep reporting that mainstream American news outlets lack. It also—and here Kaplan seems to be scolding—exudes "a breezy, pacifist-trending internationalism." Worse yet, its reportage's "subliminal message appears to be that compromise should be the order of the day." Imagine that! Or, if you work in an American newsroom, not.

Diane Winston