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The Year in CultureStanley Crouch, Azar Nafisi, Michael Pollan, and others on the most amazing—and disappointing—events of 2006.

Updated Saturday, Dec. 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM ET

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What now passes for journalism outside the vale of New York or Washington, D.C., is largely an embarrassment. Good people still remain in every American newsroom, and some of them are doing their damnedest to make their product essential. But every month, there are less of them, and every month, some soul-sucking whore from atop the pyramid types yet another memo explaining why this newspaper or that no longer needs a Washington correspondent, or a labor reporter, or foreign coverage. Until the industry begins to believe that content—and only content—matters, then there isn't a power under heaven that can prevent newspapers from meaning less to our world.

Tim Wu, professor, Columbia Law School; co-author, Who Controls the Internet? Amazing: Overshadowed by YouTube, iTunes TV may be the bigger cultural story. This year (along with Netflix) it began to quietly and fundamentally change how Americans watch TV. Although it's been seen as a way to watch TV on your iPod, iTunes TV is actually the prototype for the first real Internet television sets. Let's see if Apple can do the same for cell phones this year. Disappointing: Terribly acted, The Banquet—an overblown Hamlet-goes-to-China film—confirms that Chinese blockbusters can be every bit as trite and tacky as their American counterparts. Which may not be a surprise to anyone who's been to China lately.

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