Canary in a coal mine

... it seems my departure from The Dallas Morning News last fall really was a sad harbinger. Here's Art Winslow's round-up for the Huffington Post on the appalling "rolling blackout" of newspaper book sections across the country. What's stunning is how quickly they've all folded or been gutted and stuffed into some other section.

Anti-intellectualism is a proud tradition in American journalism, and often a worthy one -- that take-no-nonsense, Front Page-style skepticism. But that's different from this bottom-line, anything-for-the-stock-price mentality that currently grips newspaper management. The big-city daily was once considered a cultural asset, a provoker of civic self-examination and discussion. Nowadays, newspapers seem determined to fulfill the prophecy of eager webheads that they're worthless, their time is past.

Newspaper managers are succeeding at this very well -- by giving us nothing to read.