Is investigative journalism now out of reach?

The Fourth Estate’s function is any society to hold power to account. In many ways, along with writers and intellectuals, journalists are the canary down the mine. A dozen years ago, when Downfall was published, a colleague remarked that such a work could not have been created by a staffer at a mainstream newspaper. I asked why that was the case, and he said simply that my book on the death of the original Rangers represented “thousands of hours of investigative work”. For the avoidance of doubt, his estimation was reasonably accurate. I worked on the Ranger’s financial story from