What more and more people have been discovering in the modern age of openness and availability is that much of what we once thought of as serious institutions (televised and written news, for example) are far more style than substance.<p>The Daily Show's critiques of modern journalism are so devastating because, despite being a fly by night fake news organization with comedy as their main goal, somehow they manage to put on a news show that is nearly as substantive as the competition, merely by accident. And that's due to the fact that in news these days there really isn't much <i>there</i> there. Once you boil away all the high-gloss production values and the special access and the fame and the reputation you find out that at its core there is very little legitimate, original reporting work being done in the mainstream media. Which is understandable, because the big media companies learned long ago that hard journalism is difficult business, costly, and sometimes hard to sell to the viewing public. But the rate of return on glossy production values, infotainment, and pseudogravitas is through the roof.<p>But these tricks are approaching the limit of their shelf life. The big TV and print news organizations aren't attracting new, young viewers, their viewership has been getting old, and dwindling. They are rapidly approaching becoming inconsequential and that has as much to do with folks like Jon Stewart pulling up the stakes of their circus tent as it does with technology passing them by.