Newspapers are businesses, not pillars of democracy. They owe no moral, legal or ethical allegiance to their readers beyond that of a purveyor of soap. To their stockholders, it is of course a different matter. With papers' economic decline, their relevance is fading fast, and we ought to hasten the demise.

Whatever news might be claimed as "defending democracy" is by now either useless bullhorning of establishment talking points (very low cost of production!) or inane gossip intended to distract readers as they are fleeced. Witness the state of coverage of the current presidential elections. Candidates with grown-up, fleshed out ideas of substance couldn't buy coverage in newspapers because editors had already vetted them out of the real race. That is about business and profits, not about building a democracy. Consider their complicity in fanning the flames for the Iraq War. Again, that's about business, not democracy.

If newspapers can't be trusted with a global war and a presidential election, well, what is it they can be trusted with? The importance of newspapers is being grossly overstated by traditionalists for sentimental reasons. Watergate was probably a zenith never to be experienced again by this medium. Stop looking for the return of that era.

In the interim, newspapers have become an important fiber in the corporate media choke hold that is smothering democracy, not feeding it. TV was easy to take over--newspapers took a while longer. The moguls are already eying the Internet--and you're trying to save newspapers?

Mark Deneen

Ferndale, CA

A professor I had way back in 1991 asked the class a question on the first day of that sememster. "Why are newspapers in business?"

Of course, he tolerated many nonsensical replies, like "To save the world!" "To find the truth!" and many more like these. Two of us in the class were older adult students fitting in classes between the forty-hour weeks of our jobs. We didn't say anything.

Finally, Professor Klipstein, shaking his head, made a point that disturbed the more idealistically oriented "students" in the room. "Newspapers are in business for one reason only: to make money!"

It has been disturbing to watch what has happened to the entire business over the seventeen years since that class, but it appears to be the fault of the newspapers themselves.

Mr. Alterman's story detailed his disgust with at least one new owner of a newspaper group for having the "indignity" to state publicly that he believes newspapers should be more like NPR radio news programs. Mr. Alterman then uses the word "elite" or "elitist." Too many in the news business do have that sense of themselves and they project it to the rest of us. That is a turn-off, regardless what the business.

Advertisers, many with years of long-running print ads in various publications, have been leaving in droves to do better (they think) on the Internet.

Again, it is business. If an advertiser who spends thousands weekly to hopefully get a return of at least 1 to 2 percent is not getting even that, it's simply money being thrown away. You might be able to sustain that for a while, but how long?

There is much information available also detailing that web advertising is not the panacea many seem to promote it as. For myself, when I am online, which is only several hours weekly, I sure as hell do not want to be bothered by ads of any kind. Whenever ads pop-up, I get rid of them immediately. That is what most web-browsers do.

How much better is web-advertising than print? Not much. It is only less expensive.

As a nation, we have also "dumbed" ourselves so far down that we watch TV shows touting "wife-swapping" and other acts that were forever viewed as degrading, demeaning and of not much intelligence. We're all of that and less.

In my own experience with newspapers, the most enjoyable part for me was when I made money as a 12- to 15-year-old delievering them.

After working during a two-and-a-half-year period for several Long Island papers as a writer and doing advertising, I learned what the business was like in reality. It's nothing to write home, or anywhere else, about.

It could not be that the four weekly pubs I worked very hard for were, just coincidentally, made up of similar people who had no business being in the business. That is the entire business now.

Two "editors" at one of these papers never had anything close to usable experience even remotely related to newspapers. One had only skills at backyard gossip and rumors. She was hired after writing letters to the paper commenting on stories she'd read. She loved seeing her name in the paper, and the mismanagement inherent in most publications put her in the captain's seat. Just a few years later, that forty-year-old vessel was sunk.

The sinking was caused by the editor's passion for promoting herself and getting people to pay attention to her. The local advertisers grew weary of her reckless writing about local people and businesses, many hurt by her writings, none of which she was ever questioned on.

Eventually, these advertisers, even those running for many years, stopped buying ads. The advertising money stopped coming in, and that paper was reduced to actually hiring a 12-year-old as editor later on, as the GM had no budget for an actual manager. (OK--he wasn't actully 12, but you get the point...)

That was just one of the papers I worked for on a more local and regional scale. Magnify it many times as it relates to the entire business/industry today.

Business is bad for newspapers because the advertisers have stopped coming. They have stopped coming because they are in business to make money and they can not with newspapers as they are today. Too many calling themselves "reporters" or "journalists" do so for the very same reasons the professor got when he asked that question years ago. They still want to save the world and right all wrongs, as they see these things. These are all idealistically great things, but not the most important thing.

"Newspapers are in business for only one reason: to make money!" But they aren't doing that.

Francis McEvoy

Massapequa, NY

Kudos to Mr. Alterman and my fellow web letter responders for illuminating and expounding on some fine points regarding an important facet of a much larger problem--media consolidation. Especially in today's financial crisis (for the average American, not the hedge fund managers and mortgage fund investors), think of how much of this debacle could have been avoided if the average citizen was able to watch, read or listen to actual, relevent information (read news) broadcast daily on their local television and radio "news" programs or printed in their local "news" papers. With the lack of virtually any useful information citizen's need in an informed democracy, I posit that the mainstream media and the FCC are actually accomplices in most of the hardships befalling the average working American since the middle of the last century. By not providing an outlet for investigative journalism, whose function is to provide an accurate state of affairs for a citizenry to make informed decisions about their livese in a democratic republic, they, the corporate media elite, have abrogated their responsibilities and duties granted to them by the FCC on behalf of the forgotten Communications Act of 1934. But I digress...

If I may contribute in any small way to the topic Mr. Alterman kindly wrote about, I would offer that quite possibly the most effective solution to the mainstream newspaper problem, should just one of the MSM moguls choose to accept it, is seemingly the most simple (financial statements aside)--return to real news. Consider the possibility. With dwindling newspaper revenues anyway, what has one of these media giants have to lose? Trash all the needless fluff, "human interest" stories, hire back all the quality editors and investigative reporters and start printing information useful to a republic's citizens again! In today's anxious climate, I really believe people are ready to wake up from their automaton-like Matrix dreamstate and get back to reality. All it takes is one courageous media outlet not afraid of losing advertisers to get the ball rolling again. I think they'll be pleasantly surprised to see a stampede of subscriptions again.

William D. Frawley

Las Vegas, NV

Eric Alterman's article only touched on the problems of journalism. Another problem is the absolute elimination of competition via corporate mergers that only benefit a few already wealthy CEOs--CEOs whose absolutely boneheaded decisions infuriate readers and writers.

Here in Chicago, a major company first bought the Sun-Times, one of the largest newspapers in the nation. Then, the same company bought a major suburban daily south of the city, then a chain biweekly newspapers south of the city, then a chain of biweekly newspapers north of the city, and then a chain of daily newspapers in very large suburbs, including Aurora, Naperville, Joliet and Elgin, as well as a chain of weekly newspapers outside those very large cities. Every time a purchase was made, there were large amounts of layoffs, a large amount of compensation cuts and, remarkably, a savings of costs by putting more and more of the same stories in multiple newspapers.

Now why would a reader who bought, for example, the daily newspapers in Chicago and Aurora and one or more biweekly or weekly papers keep buying these papers if the newspapers contained the same articles? Needless to say, circulation of all these newspapers plunged. Some no longer exist.

The company kept cutting, circulation kept dropping, and so they kept cutting. These people had no brains.

With most suburban communities covered by one reporter instead of three or four, the news produced was obviously worse. The readers suffered tremendously. They are in the dark about what their governments, business communities, etc. are doing.

Since the USA supposedly has a capitalist system and antitrust laws to protect this system, why has the government done nothing about these "mergers"--which occur in cities throughout the USA?

And the company kept complaining it needed to cut salaries more. Long after I was gone, it was learned that one of the reasons the company was short of money was that its CEO, Conrad Black, and a few of his deputies were stealing from their company to the tune of $30 million. They are now in jail.

These CEOs are incompetent and greedy.

And then there's the fact that these newspapers reprint writers' works without permission or even notification--a practice condemned as illegal in a 2001 Supreme Court decision, but they're still doing it anyway seven years later.

I am also familiar with the Chicago Tribune's unbelievably boneheaded decisions over the years. The incompetence of these CEOs is beyond imagination.

Michael Johnstein

Oak Forest, Ill.

I understand Eric Alterman's sadness when contemplating the future of the printed word on paper. When revolutions occur, sentimental feelings naturally arise. There is a comfort to the ruffle of a newspaper, it is peaceful to curl up with the Sunday Trib, and some great reporting, writing and thoughts have been transmitted via words on a paper page.

His conclusion that if electronic media becomes the standard in reporting, or in publishing, democracy itself will be lost, goes too far, and puts too much emphasis on the delivery system, rather than the information being delivered.

What is happening in publishing is an absolute revolution, not just a change that will lead to a new mix of paper and paperless news and other published material. Electronic media can deliver a message in more formats, to more persons, more quickly and with incredibly less expensive1 than traditional print media. It's not even close.

This is not a gap that can be bridged--the cost differences, something that the artists involved in print don't often appreciate, are far too large. The Internet as a delivery system is already so far superior to printed and delivered material that the game is already up. Add to that the fact that electronic media are just getting started and can still be much improved, while paper media are fully evolved, and it's clear that the media has reached a period where fast change is going to occur, a tipping point.

I feel a great analogy for this situation is the Automobile vs. the Carriage, or Horse and Buggy. Once autos were mass-produced, they were far superior to traditional forms of travel in enough ways that they completely took over the market. The result wasn't a hybrid, either, like some hope for in publishing--you won't often see car owners bringing a couple horses along with them in case their automobile breaks down.

Paper doesn't propel democracy, freely shared opinions and open debate fuel and sustain democracy. The artist who transmits his or her truth in an engaging manner drives the debate--not the delivery system being used.

So take heart, skilled writers and photographers and, in the new media, videographers. Your skills, your messages are the heart of the matter. In the new media, your creations and truths can reach farther, faster, far less expensively than ever before--this will grow democracy more effectively than the old, familiar, comfortable paper media ever could.

John Garvey
Unlimited Reach Media

Grayslake, IL

I have stopped reading print newspapers completely, as I no longer trust the veracity of their contents. They have sadly become, for the most part, badly written propaganda machines, and their printed mentality reflects the cultural myopia, brick-headedness and often corrupt nature of their owners.

So I now get all my information from the small independent web news sites, and have for several years now.

I think the solution is actually quite simple: tie top executive compensation directly to generally accepted performance criteria--e.g., pay $1 a year in salary, with any further pay attributed according to real (not artificial), measurable achievements.

Using this approach, current CEOs would be making less than a junior staff member in your local McDanald's, which is in fact roughly what they are worth.

This would hopefully force the printed newspaper media to actually produce something worth reading--something accurate, unbiased in its factual reporting and focused on relevant, important news. When that happens, I would start reading and buying again.

Walter Charles

Millburn, NJ

Thanks, Mr. Alterman, your piece provides some further insight to the problem and hopefully will call more attention to it to those in power to make a difference. I'm a freelance writer and illustration for newspapers for over twenty years so I appreciate this effort and would like to link it to my blog, Freelancer's Lament.

Bob Eckstein
Picturetown, Inc

New York City, NY

What Alterman gets and so many critics of the mainstream media don't is summarized in his next-to-last sentence: "the loss of daily newspapers is a significant threat to the future of our democracy." How the news is delivered seems to be foremost in many critics minds (digital saves trees and print newspapers are like, so old-fashioned) but it is secondary when it comes to the role our Founding Fathers and progressive leaders in the early days of broadcasting saw for our media: a vigilant, vibrant press that is a fundamental ingredient for a working democracy. That's why government intrusions into the private business of the press like favorable postage rates for publications (going back to colonial times) and licensing for broadcast stations (dating to the early twentieth century) were instituted. The fact that the government-media dynamic has become totally corrupted (in regard to both the press's public mission in a democracy and to its business practices) does not mean that destroying a whole industry will restore the intended mission.

Many Internet posters seem to rejoice over the demise of newspapers as some sort of payback for the ills of the MSM--never seeing the irony that the content they are reading at sites like the Huffington Post is mostly produced by newspapers. While the MSM does a horrible job of fulfilling its mission, there are journalists who did their job--like those at McClatchey pre-invasion of Iraq. So what happens when there are no newspapers and a much smaller pool of working professional journalists? One example of the future could be found in the reporting on the problems at Walter Reed Hospital: long before the Washington Post did its story, people were pointing out problems there. But it was only when this bastion of the MSM brought it to a national spotlight that the abuses were addressed.

My little hometown radical publication has lots of very lengthy, very earnest articles on issues like prison reform and the security state that may make the authors and their small readership feel better but do nothing in any concrete way to solve the problems they are about. Has Jeremy Scahill's wonderful reporting on Blackwater caused that company the loss of contracts or had any effect on it at all? There were times in our country when the reporting of an Upton Sinclair could have a ripple effect resulting in meaningful change. New news delivery methods like flexible screens for downloading papers are coming, but they won't solve the ills of our media any more than the disintegration of the newspaper industry has improved reporting. One answer may be, instead of looking to new technology as a savior, to go back to the past, to the early 1900s and the Progressive movement and reporters like Sinclair to find out how the press and movements can combine to have a real impact on the world.

I like being able to hold a newspaper or magazine like The Nation; there is permanence to it. But I also get more and more of my news and opinion from the Internet, and if that's the only way to get it in the future I'm OK with that. If it gets to the point where the content coming from the Internet is just a version of my hometown radical pub and its impact as fleeting as the images on the screen, then we will be worse off than before.

Steve McGaughey

Champaign, IL

I agree. The loss of the Fourth Estate will most assuredly further diminish what is left of our democracy. We now have a very shallow commitment to our historical American values, and part of the responsibility is in fact the dumbing down of the information provided Americans. I can remember my dad listening very carefully to Lowell Thomas at 7 every evening and reading the paper page for page; now most newspapers get a cursory glance, and the news media is so predictably biased that they are virtually useless. My thanks to The Nation. Point of fact, we have virtually flattened the country of Iraq and the news media has covered zilch.

James Pinette

Caribou, ME

Aside from The Nation and a few other publications, I have come to believe the "liberal media" has always been a myth. The LA Times has never been a "liberal" paper. Its editorial page has usually backed Republicans for election. I believe that when conservatives disagree with a newspaper, they like to call it "liberal." When you occupy the extreme political right, anything to the left appears "liberal." The American people have seldom received objective news from publications owned by conservative business interests. It has always been about the "headline," the shock value of news reports and selling papers. Informing the public is the least of their worries. I will miss the comics.

Pervis J. Casey

Riverside, CA

First, great headline. Love the Beatles song. And it’s certainly true that print journalism is heading for extremely tough financial times.

As news migrates to the web and now to mobile devices and IPTV, all news organizations are competing more and more on the same platform. That means all news organizations are competing head-to-head for readers and advertising, in a way that’s far more competitive financially than ever before.

Throw in a few other factors--citizen journalists, bloggers, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and so on, all of whom are talking away readers and advertisers--and you’ve got a storm. Toss in the current crappy economy, and you’ve got a near-perfect storm.

Before the web, print journalists had to do more for less. Now they will also have to do more with less.

So print journalists need to start paying more attention to their readers and advertisers. They need to stop writing so many stories that nobody reads. On the web, unlike in print, readers--not reporters or editors or publisher--are in charge. And they need to stop hosing advertisers and give them some feedback on and control over their ads.

In short, newspapers need to start listening if they want to survive the coming storm.

Don Stilwell

Chickamauga, GA

The obvious solution to the newspaper problem and, for that matter, the magazine problem (including The Nation's) is technological: a portable, flexible reading device that enables subscribers to download the entire publication from the web. It is amazing to me that a consortium of publishers has not joined forces to fund the development of such a device. At one fell swoop it eliminates the cost of paper, printing and distribution (and, in the case of magazines, postage). Furthermore, such a device would permit much better targeting of advertising, for which publishers could charge a premium. I just hope the publications we care about survive until the development of this obvious solution to their fundamental problem of high distribution cost in an outdated format.

Sheldon Czapnik

Thompson Ridge, NY