Newspapers are dead (continued)
After years of exerting much blood, sweat, tears and mental energy defending the existence of the daily newspaper, I find myself drifting to the other side. Suddenly, I can imagine a world without daily newspapers. More ominously, I can imagine my world without a daily newspaper.

Here's how it worked on Wednesday:

I woke up (got out of bed/ran a comb/across my head, etc.) and started the first of the day's Dozen Cups o' Coffee. I wandered over to the computer and punched up msnbc.com, scanned the headlines. Punched up the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper's web site, read the headlines, noted that the rain I was hearing was expected to continue all day. Popped the Palm into the HotSync cradle, downloaded some stuff to read later. Only then did I venture outside to get the newspaper ...

... and it was soaked through. Unreadable. Just like it always is when it rains.

I wasn't even particularly upset. At that point, I had no time nor inclination to actually read the newspaper. I did call Circulation and ask to have a dry paper delivered, just to have on the record that my paper was wet again. A dry one was delievered relatively quickly, and it sat on my coffee table all day.

I subscribe to the daily newspaper because I work there. And no, I don't get a significant discount. If I did, I wouldn't count as Paid Circulation, which is how we determine where to set ad rates, which is how I get paid. Essentially, it's an investment in myself. For 16 years, I subscribed to the daily newspaper because I love newspapers, because I believes they're necessary to the fabric of a free society, because there'd always be something worth reading.

I still think the newspaper is the medium with the most authority, but now that I actually know that dedicated journalists work in television, I'm willing to cede more credit to TV.

Do I think newspapers will be around in 30 years? Probably; they're instant money machines for their publishers. Will I still be defending them and producing them with every ounce of my energy?

That, I'm not so sure about.