From H.L. Mencken’s diary, 1940:

My guess is that in the long run the newspapers will lose their more moronic customers to the radio. … The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to try to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous. I believe that many people already notice this deterioration, and that is responsible to some extent for the movement toward the radio.