Mayor J-Loop speaks the truth. It's so sad that he, and numerous other folks, are only saying now what those of us in (or recently out of) the newspaper business have tried to note:

The Internet is a wondrous thing, and blogs are great -- fun, entertaining, thought-provoking, enlightening, infuriating, and even, on occasion, news-breaking.

But The principal source of -- pick a number -- 80, 90, 95 percent of the NEWS that you hear about, read, see, text, Twitter about, Facebook, etc., in the world, started in a newspaper somewhere.

I'm not saying PAPER is forever. I'm no digital Luddite. I'm just saying that we must figure out a way to keep newspaper-sized teams and staffs of trained, paid, working reporters and editors and photographers (NOT merely the rip-and-read guy at the local radio station or the NewsTeamChannelUpDateNOW staff of maybe half a dozen actual reporters at the local TV station) to gather, edit and disseminate NEWS, via whatever medium -- web, mental telepathy, town crier, whatever the future brings.

Yeah, I'm a reporter -- or, I should say, WAS one for nearly 33 years. I was fortunate to get a buyout from my last newspaper job, late in 2007, and to land in another communications-related endeavor that I like just fine. But I know there's no substitute for independent groups of journalists, under the banner of a committed news organization, to do the work of what our country long ago termed "The Fourth Estate." It's that Roman slave of Gen. Patton's telling, the one assigned to whisper in the ear of the emperor/general returning from victory: "All glory is fleeting." It's the designated one to have to ask the impolite question, to, as they say, speak truth to power.

More than 200 of those kinds of folks are getting their walking papers today here in Denver. As a fellow journalist who competed against them in the 1990s at The Denver Post, and as a reader sorry to see them and their 149-year-10-month-old institution pass on, I wish them well and mourn this day -- for everyone.

I flew into Denver, in 1961, a kid on his way to college. I had read the Oregon papers all my life (OK--12 or more years), loved reading the newspaper, probably because my mother had read it to me since before I could talk. The first thing I did, and still do today, is buy the local paper. I remember the Rocky Mtn. News because it was in a much different format than the papers from my whereabouts. The big story, just breaking, was that some Denver cops had been implicated in a fur theft which happened because of their answering a silent burglary call to a furrier. The cops, evidently, loaded their squad cars with furs, called in that they had arrived after the burglar, and that was that. The furrier would just claim his losses to his insurance company. When I left the next June, it was up to somewhere around 80 cops who were in prison or soon to be. The newspapers never let up, and the case widened beyond the Denver cops to other law enforcement.

My remembrance of my first reading of the Rocky Mtn. News. And, the bonus, I did not get my name in the RMN the whole year I was in state, which was due more to luck than respectful teenage behavior.

I just went to read a conservative Oregon magazine, on line, with lunch, and read their swan song, obituary, last editorial. --Brainstorm NorthWest has often been a beacon of common sense in a State, Oregon, where two and one half decades of single party leadership and coverups has led us to the exposure of disgraced former Governor and Jimmy Carter Transportation Secretary, Neil Goldschmidt, who was aided by his political cronies in keeping a lid on his sexual abuse of the family babysitter when she was 14 years old, and the recent revealing of newly elected Mayor of Portland, self avowed gay leader and local icon, who groomed an intern so that when the young man turned 18, Adams could have sex with him. The issue had appeared during his campaign, and was vehemently dismissed as gay bashing and denied, which leads you to wonder if an election was stolen by lies. Disgusting behavior from both. And if not for Brainstorm and its antithesis, Willamette Week, we would not have ever learned about those public official excesses. Small news outlets digging deep and struggling to survive. The New York owned Oregonian would not print the stories, even though they knew about them first. Evidently the Newhouse folks have ethnic and cultural protection issues that come before public good. Nevertheless, the now miniscule Oregonian seems to be sputtering along, and http://www.Brainstormnw.com is gone after this month's edition. They will, along with the Seattle P-I, and the Rocky Mountain News, sorely missed. Our ability to be knowing citizens is being diminished daily, as the internet is only a place to read news generated by newspapers, magazines, and television. Who is going to be the last public investigator from the 4th Estate?