The magazine is dedicated to solid reporting on cultural, historical, social, and political events.

The Times will also put a premium on enterprise stories, solid political and business reporting, and investigative exposés.

This is solid reporting.

But often solid reporting does not help with the ratings; nor is there, many critics have noted, a great deal of it on local newscasts.

But the solid reporting still has to be there first.

Those hopes now seem impossible, and with a combination of solid reporting and often acerbic analysis Goldberger tells us why.

"I like Business Week for the solid reporting and factual basis and Fortune for the big sweeping overviews of world business trends."

It asked whether the solid reporting of important subjects, stuffily called "public interest journalism," would be "winner or loser in the on-line era."

Drooling and howling aside, he is a hard-working professional who brings solid reporting and exceptional narrative skills to a subgenre woefully in need of them.

But it sometimes meant solid investigative reporting or dogged pursuit of people trying to dodge exposure.