The future of newspapers ...

... is not bright, according to Joseph Epstein, writing in Commentary: Are Newspapers Doomed? Lots that's good here, but this will do as a sample:


I rarely give the daily Times more than a half-hour, if
that. I begin with the obituaries. Next, I check the
op-ed page, mostly to see if anyone has hit upon a
novel way of denigrating President Bush; the answer
is invariably no, though they seem never to tire of
trying. I glimpse the letters to the editor in hopes of
finding someone after my own heart. I almost never
read the editorials, following the advice of the journalist
Jack Germond who once compared the writing
of a newspaper editorial to wetting oneself in a
dark-blue serge suit: “It gives you a nice warm feeling,
but nobody notices.”