The Death of Newspapers

It was nice to see a newspaper not die last week. Platinum Equity, a private equity firm that specializes in turning around troubled businesses, announced that it had bought the failing, 130-year-old San Diego Union-Tribune, thereby saving the paper, at least for now, from the scrap heap.

Let's hope the Union-Tribune survives. In 2006, the California paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on a bribery scandal that landed former Republican Congressman Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in federal prison. Cunningham had resigned from the House of Representatives the year before after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 in bribes.

Newspaper deaths, and their consequences, are not limited to the United States. In the Guardian over the weekend, Ian Jack wrote a good piece on the sad fate of newspapers and what their passing means for democracy.