There was a time where nearly every city had multiple newspapers, and one of the differences between the papers was their partisan affiliation. A city might have a left-wing paper, like the Plattsburgh Press and a right-wing paper like the Plattsburgh Republican.

Nearly every city had a similar set up. Albany had the Times-Union and the Knickerbocker papers. This allowed for a diversity of opinion, and not the so-called neutrality enforced by contemporary editors. Competing papers meant there was a chance for something beyond the liberal establishment being heard.

There is no such thing as neutrality. The stories chosen and the angles focused on reflect the ideology of writers and editors. Democracy is danger when we pretend that certain ideologies are more correct then others. That's why we need to get away from ideologically neutral papers.

Today we have blogs that have some of the ideological diversity of the old papers. Yet, few blogs focus on reporting at the level that traditional papers do. There still is a serious market for serious reporting, even with a reasonable ideological bent. We don't want to be told what to believe, but we also want the information we are getting to be compatible with what we believe.