On Monday, finalists for the Mirror Awards — the Newhouse School’s annual honoring of excellence in writing about journalism and the media — were announced, featuring some of the best writers and thinkers in our industry, including our own Philip Bump.

The work of the finalists is excellent. One of our writers was nominated. So why do you sense that there’s a “but” coming?

Sigh. Because there is. Actually, two.

By 2005, it was time for Rupert Murdoch to “get serious” about the internet. Or so starts the engaging Financial Times profile of the wilting social network MySpace, which New Corporation acquired that summer. Kids, Murdoch noticed, were “watching less television and reading fewer newspapers,” and the most fertile ground was online. Well-intentioned, but then things crumbled.