On June 24, HBO will air the debut of The Newsroom, the first cable series from Aaron Sorkin, the Oscar- and Emmy-winning creator of The West Wing and writer of The Social Network. The show is not just a return to television but a series about television — in particular, television news and its squandered powers.


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When did the ripe, bulbous, and gibbous newspaper bubble pop?

It was probably in the 1990s, when the business better resembled a cruising blimp than it did the dotcoms like Pets.com, Boo.com, and TheGlobe.com, which all went kerblewy around the turn of the century. Unlike the bombing dotcoms, the high valuation of newspapers was based on real, not imaginary profits, and the belief that the profits from these deals would extend for years, if not decades, into the future.

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