No, they most certainly will not be missed.

And well put, Stacy.  I’ve read newspapers all my life [at least for forty-five of my fifty years] and I began to notice a trend in the mid-1970′s: the journalists and reporters were no longer writing for the average Joe, but for their snooty, college-educated selves and their friends.  It’s gotten even worse as time has gone on to where so much of it is now pure propaganda.

*shrug* Law of the Universe: When you’re competing against free, you can’t charge much.

They’re so far into the DNC talking points, Obama über alles, government-centric POV that not even supporters of those notions are willing to go to the effort of paging past the brassiere ads any more, let alone actually pay for the paper, because they can get the same thing elsewhere without the distractions.

The only people who will truly regret the demise of the Post are the homeless, who won’t have a blanket-substitute any more. Perhaps we could have a new entitlement — folding up twenty or so sheets of newsprint, to be handed out to bums, winos, &ct. for their evening comfort whilst sleeping in the shrubbery by the museums.

WaPoo and the rest of the Obamamedia are writing their own obituaries. People don’t want to pay for regurgitated regime propaganda. I read dead tree newspapers cover-to-cover every day of my life until just a few years ago when the leftist garbage simply got to be too much to wade through anymore, even at so called “right leaning” papers like the NY Post. And as the hackery worsened, the prices kept going up, first 25 cents, then fifty, then 75 followed quickly by a dollar, $1.25, and now I think it’s $1.75 for a paper a the local gas station, why bother? I may be more, but I don’t bother anymore to even look except to yell at whoever will listen about whatever leftist garbage is screaming from the covers of those non-selling papers. 

Cough – they keep sending me self-addressed reply envelopes – so I keep obliging, with my letter inside. Oh, was I supposed to include a subscription?

What is it they say about idle hands?  Tools of the devil or some such?  It might be interesting if reporters were too busy… you know… reporting… to try to blow smoke up my nether.  Yeah, I think I like your notion.  I’ll bet when actors of old, especially before women were allowed, were busy with… everything… they had little time to prattle about things of which they obviously know nothing, say, like politics?  They probably left that, and the risk of beheading, to playwrights.

Tools of the devil indeed. 

Lets make a parrallel here. 
Branch Rickey did not sign Jackie Robinson because he wanted to break the color line.  He signed Jackie Robinson because the desire to win baseball championships eventually became greater than the desire to continue discrimination. 
Likewise, the desire of the MSM owners to make money will eventually be greater than their desire to skew the news.  Baseball clubs that did not break the color line faded fast, and likewise this will happen once a major MSM brand reaches this epiphany.

Here’s a nice idea, one that I even got from a “real” journalist:  Be in the truth-telling business.  Not “my version of truth” or even “The version of truth my editor likes” or the dreaded “truth as we believe most of our readers know it” (the latter the NPR motto — “Playing to our base”).  Just explain, as clearly and accurately as possible, what you know truth to be, up to and including where truth cannot yet be seen.  You’ll make money if you’re the first to determine truth, and if in fact what you said is indeed truth.  People can and do pay for truth, as it turns out.  

I once wrote an email in response to an article by Gene Weinstein of the Washington Post.  I disagreed with him, but was respectful. 

He addressed me as “Abner”.  That’s what they think of anyone who disagrees with them.  I hope they enjoy writing a newspaper for the small number of people who agree with them. 

This is an excellent recommendation, but I fear that too few are cognitively capable of following it. “How do I know what I claim to know? What is the actual evidence? What is the counter-evidence?” are questions that too few people in general and too few journalists in particular ask themselves. Hell, these days, too few *scientists* ask themselves these questions. (Case in point: Climate change “science”.)

Who would actually pay to read the Washington Post? I can get insulted for free. I don’t need to read through columns dripping with condesenscion as they push the politically correct leftist talking points of the day. If they can’t hide their bias and report the news factually let them cater to their real audience, liberals, leftists and lions. I’ll just pop in from time to time and poke them on the comments section.

the biggest news stories of my lifetime?

point A: the complete disintegration of the european economy.

point B:
2009 US deficit, 1.413 trillion.
2010 US deficit, 1.293 trillion.
2011 US deficit, 1.300 trillion.
2012 US deficit, 1.327 trillion.

the wapo resists connecting these dots.  In their defense, the Julia cartoon did not address this issue.

has their coverage changed, between presidencies?
compare the constant reporting of troop levels in Iraq, under Bush, to the fact that most liberals have no idea how many troops are in Afghanistan, or how much more we are paying than under the bush admin.

we live in the age of ‘bi-polar’ media.

A couple points not mentioned already:

I live outside Chicago. My lovely wife insists on continuing our subscription to the Tribune. It is literally half the weight and size it was five years ago. They run every ad they can so guess what was removed? Yes, the content. Stories are fewer, shorter, and less well researched. Their own web operation provides more information and deeper stories — isn’t that a clue for their editors and publisher?

The Tribune also insists on maintaining a mainstream-left, increasingly hard-left, orientation in both its editorial policy and its reportage. It’s not Colonel McCormick’s paper anymore. That means that a mainstream conservative like me has less reason to read the paper.

And for that, the paper is almost twice as expensive as five years ago.

I just need to convince my wife that she can surf the web and read the local small town paper, which (as Mr. McCain notes) is put together by a small cadre of people who actually care about the result.