Ebert Bids Newspapers Adieu

Our friend Roger Ebert has weighed in on my favorite topic -- the demise of newspapers and the increasing ignorance of the non-newspaper-reading public.
His ending particularly hits home:

"Perhaps fearing the challenge of reading a newspaper will prove daunting, papers are using increasing portions of their shrinking news holes in providing guides to reading themselves. Before the Chicago Tribune's new design started self-correcting (i.e., rolling itself back), I fully expected a box at the top of a page steering me to a story lower on the same page.

The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.

The news is still big. It's the newspapers that got small."

For Roger's full column, go to here
Thanks to the NH Irish Twins for originally blogging on this. If you can't get there from here, go to their blog and click on their link. It works because, despite being Irish twins, they're smarter about this stuff than I am.