Dear Gary Kamiya,

1.With all due respect, I think you are 100 per cent wrong.

If the internet didn't exist, this article about the "death of the newspaper" would appear in some indie weekly, like the Village Voice, just as somebody else wrote about it not so long ago in Time.

Newspapers have been supposedly dying for several decades now, and the culprit is clearly TV, not the internet. I would argue that the internet has increased newspaper readership substantially, just not in as profitable a form as big media magnates would like. If anything, I suspect that ad revenue from the internet has probably helped stop the bleeding a bit, and (somewhat) deccelerated the rate of decline of traditonal newspapers at the hands of TV.

Another reader mentioned the UK's Guardian, approvingly. I imagine that reader wouldn't have access to the Guardian if not for the 'net. I know that I've also read scores of Guardian stories, but I've never bought a paper copy, or even seen one. Likewise, I hadn't even heard of Honk Kong's Asia Times, another supremely valuable "paper", let alone read anything in their pages, before I had internet access. I'm pretty sure my story applies to many people.

There will always be a demand, at least among some people, for serious journalism, and newspapers will continue to exist, but they need to figure out a way to make viable a business model whose bread-and-butter is the internet.

We will lose the paper that is all things to all people, with a section for everybody from most demographics, all rolled neatly into one rubber-bandable unit, and I can understand why some people will miss that, but I suspect that's inevitable.

But I'm very skeptical that subsidies are the answer. The subscriber model, like the one The Real News

www.therealnews.com/

and others have been trying to foster might hold some promise.

2.Still, there's no question, there is a huge mis-allocation of resources, and I think that somewhere down the line that needs to be addressed. Just think of how many news bureaus, of both the television and newspaper/net variety, you could open with just the salaries of Katie Couric and Brian Williams(!). Maybe we need a Big Hair Tax, with the proceeds given as grants to struggling news centers.

But that would be unfair, amusing as it is to momentarily daydream about. Better yet, reintroduce steeply progressive taxation and trust-bust the big media monopolies, and nobody would have a multi-million dollar salary, while thousands of others would have more mundane but practical opportunities to do real journalism. Sadly, I'm still dreaming.

Will Obama cave on...(fill in the blank)

If the blank is to be filled with something, anything, the right/republicans/blowhard pundits, etc want, then surely the answer is yes.

The nominee for solicitor general has already said she favors indefinite detentions for persons arrested for suspicions of aiding terrorism both on and off the battlefield, and Panetta has suggested that extraordinary rendition will remain acceptable procedure.

Obama will give phoney-baloney progressives the rhetorical figleaf of saying "we no longer waterboard," while insisting that part of the dishonest bargain is that they mumble (or just don't say) the second part: "but we may outsource it."

Don't fall for it Joan.

Cary,

Inevitably, suicidal people know how to use search engines just like everybody else, and it's reasonable to assume a lot of suicidal people, many in a substantially greater state of vulnerability than this L.W., will read this column, and the letters.

(although she may also be more vulnerable than she appears on the surface, of course...)

The law of unintended consequences applies double or triple or more here. Someone may read an uncharitable comment, or several, and see it as directed towards themselves, and cause themselves harm as a reaction.

I'm not a psychological or medical or legal professional, but common sense tells me keeping the comments open is unwise in this particular case.

"Remember that LAST 30 billion dollars you squandered? Here's another, now be good this time!"

The feigned outrage is getting more and more transparent, and increasingly tiresome.

Our major financial institutions are corrupt, but so are both political parties. Obama still has the good will of the majority, but this will also evaporate if he keeps operating as the bag man for the elites and doesn't strike out on his own. He could fire Geithner and focus the (partially deserved)blame on him, and claim he was deceived-- but let's face it, he doesn't have the guts.

"The briefing was what's known in Washington as a "pen-and-pad," though in reality that just means it's closed to still photographers and TV cameras -- laptops and even voice recorders are OK, as long as the recording isn't later put out on the air. Geithner did, however, take questions afterward and later appeared at the White House with President Obama, who made a few remarks for the networks to use. At Treasury, aides distributed a 22-page, glossy info packet on the plan and labeled it "for background use only," meaning none of it could be directly quoted or photographed."

As I recall, this is how Bush, Jr and Cheney handled the 9-11 Commission. And now, lest the pesky details might be examined by the more knowledgeable members of the public, this is how the new Obama administration wants to present their plans.

This is something crooks do, and something a crooked press tolerates.