Though one of us does.

The function served by daily newspaper journalism is critical to the very maintenance of democracy. It’s time we recognized that.

Ha ha!  That’s a good one, Leonard!  Your obliviousness has an amusing, ridiculous beauty.

Thinking about it, I realize the fun comes mostly from the sheer arrogance of your idiocy.   You mock Sarah Palin’s stupidity while simultaneously arguing that “communication is necessary, and so telegraphs will never die!”

Bwahhhh ha ha ha!  No, now I see the true wellspring of my hilarity.  You blather on about just how good you and your peers are at your job, you don’t show the slightest understanding of the difference between a medium and a message…and you are a professional communicator.  LLOL!*

See, it would be less funny if you were a telegraph operator arguing that your job can never die:

…who was it who worked endless hours during the California Gold Rush, fingers bleeding, spreading the news of this vast new wealth?  Us!  Telegraphers!  We’re the greatest!  Do you think Mark Twain can do what we do?  Hah!  Telegraphy will never die!

That’s you, Lenny.  Well, a less-stupid, less-funny version of you.  Because it’s not the telegrapher’s job to understand or translate information.  He just sends another’s message.  But understanding things, and sharing them in a way such that others can now understand them?  That’s your job, Pitts.  That is literally your job.  And yet you don’t have wit enough to parse medium from message.

Lenny…poor lil’ Lenny…”newspapers” and “communication” aren’t the same thing.  Just as “horse and buggy” doesn’t equal “transportation”.   You say that “daily newspaper journalism” can’t be replaced.  A question, then:

Where did all the town criers go?

How about the Pony Express?  Hmmm?  Where are the buggys and telegraphs and wood-burning steam engines?  Why, most of them still exist.  They are even beloved.  Because they are historical artifacts, after all.  A few modern folks are always captivated by such things and seek to preserve their existence.

In that sense, newspapers may never die.

“Communication”, Leonard.  That’s the necessary thing, not you ink-stained wretches.  More specifically, reporting and analysis is what you self-worshipping journalists are supposed to provide.  But you professionals replaced reporting and analysis with “journalism”, Pitts…which is why newspapers are dying.  RIGHTFULLY dying.  Journalism is to reporting what cancer is to a healthy body.  It is a twisted and utterly selfish mutation that inevitably kills its originator if left unchecked.

It is a somber thing that newspapers are dying, Leonard, but your rationalizations and pipe dreams won’t change that.  And you certainly can’t face the truth that you and your ilk are what’s killing them.  I enjoyed reading papers…decades ago.  But they became more and more overrun with the likes of you and much, much worse than you.  Reporting turned into editorals and editorials into shrieking propaganda and lies.  You and your fellow Professional Talkers poisoned the inkwell, as you poison every other well you touch.  And since Digital Age newspapers are the financial runts of your TalkyTalkTalk industries, naturally they’re dying first.

If you want newspapers to live, Lenny…you and your collegues should get out of that business, take over the internet, and force reporters and honest columnists back into newsprint.  Millions of us starved for truthful communication will then go back to reading newspapers.

Alternately, you lot could grow two brain cells to rub together while forming a rudimentary morality in which allies are held to the same standard as opponents.

But we all know that isn’t in the cards, don’t we?

*Literally Laughing Out Loud.