Writers and editors at the Denver Post recently did what more than a few journalists have only dreamed of doing: They denounced their proprietor in the pages of the Denver Post. So audacious was their action that the gesture made the front page of the New York Times, which reported approvingly that the Post “is in open revolt against its owner” and “pulled no punches” in its weekend Perspective section: “News matters,” read the Post headline: “Colo[rado] should demand the newspaper it deserves.”

The immediate cause of the newsroom rebellion was a familiar one. The Post’s owner, a New York-based hedge fund called Alden Global Capital, had demanded significant staff reductions and the Post’s editorial-page editor asked, in an impassioned essay, whether “these heartbreaking instructions . . . represent the beginning of the end” for the Post. Then he issued a challenge: If the “vulture capitalists” at Alden Global aren’t “willing to do good journalism here, [they] should sell the Post to owners who will.”

I should acknowledge, at this juncture, that while I tend to believe journalists ought to refrain from biting the hands that feed them—and that includes subscribers as well as proprietors—I have no idea which side is right or wrong in this matter. It is entirely possible that, in the new digital age, Denver cannot sustain a plentifully staffed metropolitan daily newspaper—the Post’s principal competitor, the Rocky Mountain News, closed its doors a decade ago—and it is equally possible that Alden Global Capital, in distant New York, is merely draining as much Colorado cash as it can.

Yet I have my suspicions: The editor issued a plea for what amounts to a benefactor—“It’s time for those . . . who care most about their civic future to get involved and see to it that Denver gets the newsroom it deserves”—which sounds more like philanthropy than business.

The problems of the Post may be unique to Denver, or to Alden Global Capital. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that the substance of the news staff’s argument is a well-known one, repeated everywhere old media is imperiled:



A flagship local newspaper . . . plays a critically important role in its city and state . . . and stands as a lighthouse reflective . . . of—and accountable to—a community’s values and goals. A news organization like ours ought to be seen . . . as a necessary public institution vital to the very maintenance of our grand democratic experiment.



This sentiment is so familiar—and so frequently repeated and enshrined in the trade—that it prompts an obvious question: Is it true? Historically, newspapers like the Post have played an important role in the lives of their communities and have certainly wielded influence. But just as quantity is scarcely a measure of distinction, power is not necessarily an emblem of quality. Some newspapers are better than others, in terms both of intrinsic value and their contribution to “our grand democratic experiment.” Others—and I can think of a few—cannot be described so charitably.

In fact, in broad historical terms, the Post’s case requires a discomforting footnote. The fact is that newspapers are not just a relatively recent invention—large metropolitan dailies like the Post scarcely existed before the Civil War—but for some time “our grand democratic experiment” progressed reasonably well without them. This is not to say that we would benefit from their absence. I am an old newspaperman myself and wish the Post well. But it is to suggest that connecting the survival of American democracy to the health of newspapers amounts to special pleading.

For the truth is that the implications of digital technology—for journalism, at any rate—have yet to be realized, much less understood. It used to be argued that the invention of the printing press in the 15th century was vital to the advancement of Western civilization. And of course, in a sense, it was. Printing certainly expanded the scope of literacy in Europe and hastened the course of the Reformation, a good thing, in my opinion. But as Kenneth Clark once argued, “Fifth-century Greece and 12th-century Chartres and early 15th-century Florence got on very well without it, and who shall say that they were less civilized than we are?”

Similarly, while democracy is enhanced by institutions like daily newspapers, it is not dependent on them—and derives from a variety of basic elements in society: education, morality, the rule of law, freedom of conscience. The First Amendment makes the existence and prosperity of newspapers possible, but “freedom . . . of the press” is a general proposition, not a specific prescription. How that freedom is practiced, how it manifests itself commercially, is left unmentioned.

Technology giveth and taketh away, and the effects of technology in times of transition such as ours are seldom obvious. In the 1950s it was confidently assumed that television would revolutionize education. No one guessed that, in the long run, TV’s effect on learning would be baleful while its influence on politics would be profound. Similarly, the irony of the digital age is that while the Internet has radically expanded the media landscape, such expansion has inevitably generated painful costs. Information is accessible, knowledge is instantaneous, and communication is ubiquitous. But certain knowledge can be dangerous, much information is misinformation, and some communication is better left unsaid.

More to the point, the economic value of newspapers remains a question mark. To the extent that newspapers are assets to communities—informing the public, encouraging debate, holding errant public officials to account—they refresh democracy. But their function has been slowly and relentlessly supplanted and, like the arts, may someday be largely dependent on patronage.

We may not like the look and sound of new media, but democracy, like capitalism, destroys as well as creates. For every daily newspaper that has lately disappeared, dozens of alternative voices have emerged. The survival of the Denver Post would be nice, but is it necessary?