One gloomy point of view

Well, this one might depress you or it might get your hackles up. It's a column by Peggy Drexler about the declining health of newspapers. I think she's too gloom-and-doom, and also a bit elitist about the value of local news. She writes:

I have been watching newspapers like you watch a cherished friend who has a slow debilitating illness. You wonder: even if they survive, will they ever be the same? The signs are not encouraging.

A colleague of mine in College Media, Kathy Lawrence at the University of Texas, wrote this in response:

This piece also speaks to the awesome responsibility we all have in this. We can throw in the towel and succumb to inevitability or work to shape that future so that the value remains. I worry that a collective we -- college and commercial newspapers -- are rushing together toward a cliff when we could be standing together and pushing to retain the richness and depth of news that has sustained
our democracy.