No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Journalistic solipsism requires that outside phenomena be treated with clinical detachment but those within the industry be screamed with lights and sirens. For instance, enormous nationwide job losses are dispassionately reported but high double digit layoffs in a newsroom are greeted with bold, caps, updates and overheated rhetoric. It also explains the myopia over what troubles the industry. We are in a recession, so it seems obvious that newspapers would be in the doldrums too. Yet the internet is the focus of their ire. Why? Nothing is on the scene now that wasn't around five years ago. If the economy tanks then looking at your online operations should be part of weathering the storm, but why make it the primary focus?

It has gotten to the point where Mr. A takes away the sharp objects at the table when someone brings up "the terrible times facing newspapers these days" or "isn't it just awful how no one reads anymore." Newspapers make plenty of money. PLENTY of money. They are wildly successful businesses. If you or I owned them we'd be jumping for joy.

They just don't make enough money to satisfy the greedy, rapacious assholes who own and run them. This isn't a death, you know. It's a homicide. Newspapers aren't dying. They're being murdered. And until somebody convenes an academic conference on how to overthrow these fuckers and raise funds for employee buyouts of every last one of these newspapers you cannot pay me in solid gold ingots to listen to one more stupid lecture about the Internet.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post. A copy of this was mailed as a letter to the editor Thursday morning.

Okay, so I go out to get the morning paper, only there is no morning paper because I only get the paper delivered Thursday through Sunday. So that just sucks for two obvious reasons: I don't know what day it is and even if I did there would still be no paper. This is awful is what I thought as I stood outside, pretending to pick weeds because my neighbor across the street saw me and what was I going to do? Yell "I don't know what day it is?" So I picked weeds because it at least looked like I had something productive to do, and hardly anyone accuses people who pick weeds of not knowing what day it is. I say "hardly" because in truth this is just a guess. Maybe everyone (except me) looks at weed-pullers and thinks "poor sap probably doesn't even know what day it is."