News like this really pisses me off. If we lose our newspapers, we lose democracy. Corruption on the local level skyrockets because there is no public eye on the actions of politicians, and that trend only increases the further up the political ladder you go.

As Mark Starr says in a recent New Republic article "More than any other medium, newspapers have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm systems."

Here's the thing, though. You're reading this on a computer screen. I still subscribe to the NYTimes, but I read most of the articles on my BlackBerry now. It is a valid question to ask if the Internet can effectively supplant the role of the local newspaper.

Potent, investigative reporting takes resources, extreme focus and a strong defense. That's tough to pull off for a stand-alone blogger, but not necessarily impossible. Crowd-sourcing, instant notifications of news, automated aggregators, all of that is useful but we still need humans to put all the pieces together and make some sense of the chaos.

The way news is delivered has already changed. I just hope we can maintain the vital purpose of strong journalism so that we can always have an eye on the guys and gals that think they are running things.

They're not. We are. And our newspapers are our first line of defense against the insidious creep of corruption.

See I know all this cause I'm watching The Wire. We are 1/2 way through season 2. It keeps us sane between episodes of LOST.

The Beastie Boys are offering a digitally remastered reissue of Check Your Head. Looks sweet!

This music... project? art piece? ensemble? hack? by Kutiman is totally and completely amazing. It's nothing I would have ever considered doing with a bunch of YouTube videos, but really it makes perfect sense.

His site is called Thru-You. Check it out and get down.

(I found this via Waxy which is also a great site, and worth checking out now and then.)