is this really the end for the newspaper?

A moment of silence, please, for the passing of the daily paper.

Silence — to dramatize the loss of the public voice, the tangible evidence of the First Amendment.  As newspapers across the country continue to downsize, I am among those mourning  the industry’s imminent demise.

“But you can read the News on the Internet,” say those who just don’t ‘get it’. They don’t ‘get’ the thrill of slinking outside at dawn  to grab the paper and dart back inside before the neighbors catch  you in your jammies.

Try doing that with your computer!  Try using your web pages for lining drawers and wrapping knick knacks!  I mourn for the multi-purposeful newspaper.

I grieve for the talented newspaper people who are losing their jobs to cutbacks.    For they have been the standard-bearers of Journalism.  During my career in radio news, I learned to admire newspaper reporters for their devotion to accuracy and to strict literary principles.

In radio, we got away with speaking conversationally, and often, pretty sloppily. In newspapers, they write properly, and often, artistically.

At any breaking news event you can spot them.    There are the scruffy radio reporters, rushing to meet hourly deadlines; there are the well-dressed TV reporters with their hard-working entourages; and then there are the newspaper reporters.   They’re the ones asking all of the intelligent questions and writing the answers down verbatim.

Broadcast reporters steal from them.   Ideas.  Leads.  Whole Stories.   Listen to any radio newscast and you’ll hear the newspaper re-written into headlines.

So here’s to the press who have toiled  unseen and unheard, in order to clearly, thoughtfully — and often downright beautifully– bring us (at least) a close approximation of the Truth.

And now, silence.