Debra Saunders Lament

Newspapers are dying a slow and painful death of their own making, because they can't see where they are screwing up. People do not, as you said, want to have their every closely held belief mocked in papers that they have to pay for. And the papers have abandoned the old saw about reporting, "You two fight and I'll write about it" in favor of a new paradigm that basically says, "You two fight, I'll report it as a great victory for the guu I like, and if he gets into trouble, I'll join the fight and help him win. Then I'll write about how courageous he was in beating the other guy." The papers simply don't want to admit that the public is no longer fooled by their jumping into the "fight", while pretending to be honest observers of it.