Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 15, 2013

This is a glimpse into the future. The printed page is giving way to the digital tablet in the same manner as the cuneiform clay tablet to papyrus. When traditionalists with ink stained thumbs quit subscribing and go exclusively online with the younger set, death of the hard copy age is near. In the future there are probably only two outcomes. The first might be surviving daily newspapers end up as digital aggregators with minimal staffing, plant, and equipment, while surviving journalists become freelance pajama types hoping to sell their stuff to the surviving aggregators like starving artists do today. The possible alternative for the dailies, at one time known as “public watchdogs,” is to get “stimulus” funding from the looming one party national government and officially perform the exact same propaganda function they now semi-surreptitiously do as volunteers.