Chris Hedges on the dying newspaper industry

What do the tectonic shifts in newspaper journalism mean as publications struggle to make money amid economic downturns and loss of readers? Former New York Times correspondent and Harvard Divinity School graduate Chris Hedges thinks it is a collision of forces that will ultimately result in our decline much like ancient Rome. Here's an excerpt from his essay:

"The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print."

• More stories and essays by Chris Hedges on Alternet
  
• Reaction to the essay from Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine
• Jay Rosen writes more about the changes in the journalism "tribe."