Somewhere in the basement at my parent’s house, there is a collection of newspapers that marked off important historical events from our family’s worldview. Copies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the day that the US won the “Miracle on Ice” hockey game, anytime the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series, Princess Diana’s death, 9/11, the commencement of war in Iraq, the death of Stan Musial—stuff like that. When I was in town this summer, I remember looking at the papers from a decade ago and thinking one thing—newspapers are total shells of their selves, even counting the not-too-distant past.

That is because, in an attempt to stem the losses from the steep drops in print circulations, most newspapers became more “bloggy” by syndicating a lot of content from Reuters and The Associated Press, while laying off many unique editorial personalities and cutting the size of the newspaper. … Read the rest of this article!