CHICAGO—In a somewhat  evangelical  speech that was not entirely unlike Tom Cruise's in Magnolia here, Jim Louderback—the former editor-in-chief of PC Magazine and current CEO of Revision3, an online video company backed by the dudes from Digg—lamented the slashing of editorial budgets in the magazine industry. Specifically, the disappearance of a position that is sounding more and more antiquated: the “fact checker.”

“In the 90s, it seemed like we had hundreds,” he said. “Now, guess how many fact checkers we had when I left? That’s right, zero.”

Louderback did allow that “magazines are not going away, but they've been changed forever.”

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