"Are Newspaper's Dying?"

Susan Estrich begins her excellent Yahoo! News essay titled "Are Newspapers Dying?" by saying her local paper no longer has a Sunday opinion section or a book page. The Journal Sentinel has already passed along the word to staffers that it may eliminate the jobs of editorial page cartoonist (actually, Stuart Carlson has accepted a buyout after being told his job was eliminated), book editor, TV columnist and movie critic, among others. Presumably, we'll get wire service reports for all the above. But that gets to the heart of Estrich's essay: who is going to create the content? (Not answered by the Journal Sentinel, by the way, is why we're going to want its online offerings, if not its print, once it quits offering great, unique content like Carlson cartoons or Joanne Weintraub essays on television; I guess we're supposed to turn to the JS for stories on suburban robberies or its 14,856th story on education this week). To oversimplify Estrich's point, people -- including college students -- still want to read. They just don't want to pay for it. She's right.

Along the same line, Eric Alterman opins on the same subject here.

At least, people are beginning to talk about the problem, not just wring their hands.