RE; this weeks article "Old Media, New Media"

This article didn't surprise me too much, but I did think and maybe hope that social media, particularly the worlds' prolific bloggers, would reflect, and perhaps study in a more in depth way than traditional media might, the issues of our day. This paragraph, I found somewhat disturbing:

"The week of August 17-23, for example, the traditional press led with the health care debate for the fifth week in a row as the Obama administration appeared poised to pull back its support for the so-called “public option” to be included in a final bill. That story was not among those followed closely in social media that week. There, two scientific studies that received almost no mainstream media attention led the list. For bloggers, the top story was about Canadian researchers who conducted a mathematical exercise to see if a zombie attack would lead to the collapse of civilization. And Twitterers led with a story about research by a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who discovered that 90% of U.S. paper money contained small traces of cocaine"

I was hoping that social media would be filling the gaps left by the shrinking of our more traditional newspapers and magazines, instead of adding to the general "noise" of our more inflammatory and headline seeking news reporting agencies.