When journalists see their profession crumbling before them, left without jobs and stripped of what they love to do, it is surely disheartening and deflating -- a feeling of helplessness.

For us career newspaper people, it won't be the same world without E&P. But then again, it hasn't been for years. It's a different media world today, and E&P's shuttering merely confirms it -- in boldface.

It is now much easier and cheaper to publish a book than ever before.

The Internet has been a destructive force for many business models, but none threatens the basis of the republic as much as the digital knife busily sawing at the fraying Achilles tendon of American newspapers.