Newspapers are not dying. We just don’t respect the people who are buying them or the people who might want to buy them.

There’s an old saying that God doesn’t close one door behind you without opening another somewhere else.  My 23 years at The Morning Call newspaper have come to an end and a new life waits on the other side. I’d always wanted to retire early, but it’s a wee bit earlier than I’d planned, bailing out on one of the last lifeboats tossed out by our parent company Tribune.  This is a double death—the death of my career as a photojournalist and the apparent death of print journalism as we know it.

But contrary to that view, newspapers are not really dying.  We just don't respect the people who are buying them or the people who might want to buy them. It’s not being elitist. It’s not intellectual existentialism. It’s reality. That’s what the public wants from us—the truth, not flowery trite prose that tastes sweet as corn syrup but never satisfies.  They want the truth.  Newspapers need to be on the high ground continuously and they can’t be on the high ground as long as they're busy force-feeding pablum.

I've watched as our paper has moved from hard news and pertinent features into the more murky realms of the so-called "news you can use."  Unfortunately, most of it seems irrelevant.  The nation and world news have been relegated to several numbered snippets that take up a mere half page.  The front pages are full of trend stories, features and philosophizing. Flash and color have replaced content, something I suppose readers are not supposed to notice.

The real bottom line is that corporations and newspapers just don’t mix.  Corporations exist to make money.  Newspapers exist to inform the public.  There is no middle ground on which they can meet.  So the goal is not to be the newspaper of record—the goal is to be the fastest with the infotainment.  That’s not transformative change, that’s shooting yourself in the foot.

Are we witnessing the death rattle of Tribune?  Or will Sam Zell turn it into a radio/TV giant at the expense of its print product?  He bought a severely wounded company, one that had the bottom line beaten into it all the way from Wall Street to the LA Times and back again.  Can the Ghost Dancer survive this kamikaze spiral?  Will any of those left behind in the streamlined newsrooms care if he does?  You tell me.