The fate of newspapers in this country, and possibly the practice of real journalism itself, seems in a precarious state these days, even more so after the closing of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver yesterday. There are almost certainly other big city dailies about to crash, and efforts to remain viable have meant severe cutbacks in things like arts coverage, independent bureaus, editorial cartoons and columnists, etc. over the past few years. Certainly there will remain places where one can get the news, but the newer forms of delivering such content will never match either the intellectual breadth nor the tactile sensation of opening up a good print newspaper.For a more expansive and elegiac treatment of this topic, let me recommend this piece by Hal Crowther, to my mind one of the most astute essayists offering cultural commentary in the country today. He comes at this topic as a former journalist (I first read him as a TV critic way back in the early '70s for the Buffalo News), and clearly grasps what is at stake.
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