Newspapers – or at least newspaper reporters and editors – are critical to our society and democracy. If newspapers start collapsing and closing down, we will lose a public service that’s more valuable than many branches of government. There will be almost nobody to keep government and industry honest without newspaper reporters. The pronouncements of special interests will go unchallenged. People will not know what to believe.

TV and radio reporters only tell you what happened (NPR does a little more but its story count is very limited.) Bloggers (like me) tell you what they think happened, often with no facts to back it up. Newspaper reporters and editors tell you not only exactly what happened but they tell you why it happened. Only in newspapers does the public get enough information to decide the truth for themselves. By the way, TV, radio and blogs still get most of their information from newspaper reporters.

Unfortunately, people who work at newspapers have been deluding themselves over the past ten years that they could somehow survive in the dead tree business. But the avalanche of bad news (try to find something positive, I dare ya), culminating in the hideous bankruptcy of the Tribune Co., cannot be denied. Many newspapers may have only a few years to live. Some will not survive the recession. We will soon see major cities with no newspaper. That’s far worse than a shame. It’s a threat to society. It’s a threat to democracy.

Newspapers can survive, but only if they race as fast as possible to the paperless future. They won’t do it on their own; they need some enticement or coercion. A bailout of newspapers won’t cost anywhere near what it costs to bail out Detroit or Citibank. And if the government wants some equity stake as collateral, I’m fine with that. It works with NPR and BBC. So let’s get on with it. If newspapers can come up with a plan to go wholly digital, taxpayers who love democracy should help them out. Newspapers have helped out taxpayers for a century.

“… Were it left to me to decide whether we should have government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Thomas Jefferson in letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787