[norlys]

I wouldn't call the criterion for a good paper "never reports anything inaccurate" as news are written by humans and humans are fallible, but rather "is able to admit mistakes and will put effort into clarifying rather than covering them". Also I would criticise the term "not reporting anything bad" - that could also be interpreted as not reporting anything that could speak against the government, for example. Instead I would recommend "acts according to some set of morals" as a criterion - in Germany we have a "Press Code" that every journalist learns and that is also being observed by the German Press Council. Another note: I think there cannot exist such a thing as the one perfect paper, because there does not exist one perfect opinion or viewpoint. The purpose of a good paper is to bring that into account: To picture different, maybe yet unseen perspectives on a problem. A set of high quality papers with different focuses existing alongside each other is a good thing for the same reason.

One paper that does a great job in my opinion is "Die Zeit". I am not familiar with the American media landscape and thus a equivalent, however.