The stories you worked on do matter. You helped change people's lives by shining a spotlight on their lives and their struggles. Even though the economy seems to be destroying journalism - it's ironic because now, more than ever, there are a million and one stories about what people are going through that will never be told. I wish you well in the future.

I have read many stories about the demise of the Rocky Mountain News, going all the way back to when they combined forces with the Denver Post. However, I have yet to hear anyone mention that Denver just isn't a large enough city to support more than one major daily newspaper. It seems to be the smallest metro area in the country with two major newspapers, but I guess not anymore...

NOPE, they either ignored or openly mocked him.

Alex Jones, for those not in the know, is the agent provocateur who correctly called the current forming police state before it became so open and public.

Yesterday on his program he reported that his website over the past year received hits from 170 MILLION unique web addresses.

Last week he was explaining that MAINSTREAM teevee and radio station owners all over the USSA are beginning to consider ways in which to showcase his work. The way they put it is that they do not consider themselves part of the new world order, thus they know they would be one of the ones who would be run over and crushed by the elites.

Alex Jones just keeps getting bigger and bigger. People are waking to the increasing threat that this nation, Democrat and Republican leadership alike, is out of control and heading in a direction that can only be bad for this country.

And worse, that there is an organized AGENDA arrayed against the US populace.

So Alex Jones is GROWING, his previously conspiratorial fringe views are becoming MAINSTREAM.

MEANWHILE papers all over the USSA are going under, because for eight years they ignored the REAL news going on in Washington during the Bush Cabal's REIGN. Their editors were MORE THAN GLAD to take CIA dollars to report only the news that the CIA allows to be reported.

FUCK the Rocky Mountain News and Fuck all the newspapers that called people who are awake freaks and conspiracy theorists.

When there is talk of open rebellion among BOTH conservatives and liberals today, suddenly Mr. Fringe is looking like a prescient HERO.

These papers deserve to die, from the New York Times on down. They are the enemy of the people and people have figured it OUT.

My local (The Boston Globe) just keeps getting thinner and thinner and trying to redefine itself every six months or so. The Classifieds -- that humongous bulk that used to make up so much of the paper is now down to a streamlined few pages. I of course, neo-luddite that I am, hope to buy the very last edition of the very last for-purchase newspaper printed in the US. If it's not in my area code, will you send me a copy? I'll pay for the shipping.

Interestingly enough, the local "alt" weekly went back to free distribution after about 10 years of pay-as-you-go street boxes. The Globe, stupidly enough, bought a 12 page free upstart tabloid that everyone grabs on their way into the subway - and gives it away for free. That's now the daily paper for the all important under-30 demographic. Newspaper-specific recycling bins have appeared in the metro so people can not litter their 5 minute commute-avoidance "news" and be green.

I read the paper and I'm pretty well informed about what's going on in the world. I read the paper 15 years ago and I knew who the Taliban and Al Qaeda were, before 9/11. I didn't believe the MSM reporting on the Iraq War, Judith Miller et al. That's called discernment, or judgement if you like, or making up your own mind from the sources available, so the NY Times is not, like, my gate-keeper and all that bullshit.

The one good thing about this new media internet thing is that I can read the Guardian, for instance. Where they apparently still do some reporting.

Ah, death of reporting, why do you torment me so?

Reading this article reminded me of an idea I thought of a few years ago while reading about textile closures in North Carolina in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago. Why don't we offer some sort of mechanism that allows employee buyouts of these troubled firms and allow them to continue as locally-owned interests, rather than by nameless, faceless corporations seeking obscene profits? And leveraged buyouts, etc.

That would be change that we could believe in.

In the future all "news" will be collected by automated Predator drones and beamed directly to your kindle.

There will be no words, just pictures.

Paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

Meanwhile back in St. Louis the venerable Post-Dispatch, founded by Joseph Pulitzer himself, has also fallen upon hard times. It hasn't folded yet, but it is staggering. Ten or fifteen years ago the oft-lauded sheet started slipping and sliding in little ways. Like, 2 spelling errors in the lead editorial of the Sunday paper? It also adopted a tabloid-like format to spunk it up a bit, but most of its constant readers - conservative St. Louisians all - didn't want to know from tabloid formats, or any change to anything, newspaper or otherwise. A few years ago the readers felt the cruelest cut of all: The Pulitzers sold the paper to a chain of small potatoes dailies and weeklies based in Iowa. It became clear almost immediately where the folks up in Iowa were going to take it: Think, local news. Very local news. The Post always covered local news, of course, or at least some local news. (When I was a kid the Post-Dispatch devoted an entire section of the Sunday paper to the social activities of people with French names who were descended from St. Louis' founding fathers. The Saint in St. Louis was Louis IX of France). I have a hunch that the Post is headed to where the Rocky Mountain News has gone.

The only upside to the demise of the letterpress is that a lot of trees are going to heave a huge sigh of relief.