Whose truth is it anywho?

I can see it coming. Cuz they don't meet the bottom line, we'll be hearing about the death of schools.

They're just not cost effective.

So, we'll drop them and go find another means for people to know something. Maybe they can learn what they need to know by watching TV or playing on the computer.

Schools will become dinosaurs, just like newspapers. Sounds far-fetched, right?

Well, newspapers don't cut it when it comes to profits, so they've gotta go. So, that's what's happening every time we blink, it seems. Would we have ever thunk such a thought 15 years ago?

Now, as we watch the demise of our newspapers, we must go somewhere else to find our truth. Never mind that, for a lifetime, many of us have enlightened ourselves while sipping our coffee and getting our daily fix on the broad smorgasboard of news and views unfolding in the world outside our head.

Never mind that most of those folks who provide that information and those thoughts within the pages of those papers are trained professionals with well-seasoned, trained, responsible professionals overseeing their work and making sure most of the stuff they put out in print at least resembles the truth.

One of the guiding principles I learned while working as a professional journalist was that communities rely on the newspaper to sort out truth from fiction/gossip/hearsay/inuendo and downright lies.

With that in mind, our first responsibility in gathering news was to remember that principle, to rise above the human inclination to fudge a little just to make the story more palatable to readers.

Truth is sometimes palatable, sometimes not.

Still, it's an essential ingredient to a functioning, free, informed society. Whether the truth is bad or good does not matter. I would not go so far to say it's an absolute but when provided with tangible facts, data, evidence, etc., it comes darn close.

So, we don't have newspapers to read with our morning coffee in the near future----where do we go to find our truth? Of course, there's the Internet, and, of course, there's the television set, but let's remember why some of those news-oriented shows stay in business.

Bottom line, right?

How many times have we seen topics of real meaning to the general public's lives get thrown aside the instant some titillating, gossip-laced story full of slime and intrigue comes along to dominate the television coverage for hours on end.

Timely, meaningful topics suddenly get shelved and forgotten as the drama plays out 3,000 times over. Only on "slow news days" does the meaningful stuff reappear and only at the mercy of no juicy, "breaking news-which sure does break for a long time on television,"pushing it aside once again. Now, that's the way to get our news for sure.

At least, in reading a reputable newspaper every day, we're presented a smorgasboard of thoughtfully crafted and researched items from which to choose.

Or, another way we'll be able to get our news is to swallow up every morsal of the propaganda that gets sent to us via those "This Just In and This IS True and It Is Darn Scary" email forwards that get passed around and around endlessly for years on end. Some folks have already chosen this route as their lifetime pursuit of the truth as "I want to hear it."

I swear that some people I know rely solely on this garbage for their skewed truth, never questioning, never skeptical, never reading any other takes on the subject, always accepting every word, always passing it on to the next gullible soul, who happens to be seeking an educational degree via "Forward University."

I do worry about the truth as we have known it through our lifetime of reading daily newspapers. I also worry about our history and where we'll be going to find it, once the print papers and periodicals have been put to bed for good---all because they didn't meet the bottom line.

Well, meeting the bottom line may be important, but I'm guessing that because of newspapers' failures to come in contact with that line, we may soon see ourselves bottom fishing for truth.

And, it seems like that method could possibly hook on to an awful lot of garbage.