When my local newspaper got bought out by a big media conglomerate a few years back (quebec-cor) I stopped reading it. It had been locally but privately owned for well over 100 years (Albeit by a conservative family), but at least it was local and genuine. Now it's just full out re-cycled tripe. Its kind of sad, but alternative press should trump stogy print. My pet peeve is that we print out everything (ie at work)....weren't we supposed to be a paperless generation as of 10-15 years ago. For gods sake, save some trees.

Think back a decade or so ago when we were being told that e-commerce would kill brick-and-mortar stores. We were led to believe that people would do all their shopping online and every mall in America would be shuttered.

A lot of malls ARE being shuttered but it ain't because of e-commerce, but rather the lack of commerce.

In the case of the print newspaper, a few things will keep it in operation: no need for an expensive reading device, advertisers' insistence on being available in print, increasing retailers' resistance to accepting home-printed coupons*, the low cost of a newspaper...oh, and you really can't use your e-reader as a dropcloth, packing material, window-washing paper, birdcage liner, papier-mache medium or any of the other thousands of things you can do with many sheets of recycled paper.

* Because it's easy to counterfeit a coupon, and manufacturers won't pay for a redeemed counterfeit coupon, many retailers in my area won't accept a coupon that was printed from the Internet. They only take coupons that were in newspapers or magazines.