Goodbye newspapers (from a September 2009 post)

A Sept. 2, 2009 BJ Alums blog story quoted a Princeton study about the effects of newspapers' decline on government corruption when there's no spotlight exposing their shady dealings by newspapers. It used the death of one of the two major newspapers in Cincinnati as a case study. Click on the headline to read the blog report.

Click here to download a PDF file on the Princeton University report.



Basically, as the "Goodbye newspapers is a change for worse"-headlined blog item below indicates, politicians and bureaucrats had a field day when Cincinnati lost the competitive incentive as a one-newspaper town.  The same could happen nationally.
 
Our nation's founders realized the importance of a vibrant and free press in keeping the crooks, political and otherwise, on their toes. That's why these really wise guys made freedom of the press the First Amendment.
 
The crooks, political and otherwise, are licking their chops at the prospect of doing their dirty work without having some newspaper reporter checking into their skulduggery. 

Who needs newspapers? We all do. Without newspapers, even with the other media still around, we will all pay the price for not having a cat around while the mice run amok.