Or maybe they can't afford not to?

Newspaper Critics Don't Understand the 'Business', says a San Jose Mercury News retired executive in this piece of defensive hyperbole.

Lou Alexander says "many people writing about the future of newspapers are getting it wrong."

Who am I to say so? I recently retired from a director's job in the San Jose Mercury News advertising department. Early in my career, I was a reporter and editor. So I know both sides of the ethical "firewall" in journalism.

Newspapers should cut profit demand:

It might be fun to fantasize about cutting newspaper margin expectations to something under 10%, but the way the world works makes it impossible.

Michael Socolow, a professor of American Studies and journalism program director at Brandeis University recently wrote: "Daily newspapers should drop the consultants, lower their unrealistic earnings targets and do what they do best. If they fail to do this, they will have nobody to blame for their demise but themselves."

It might be fun to fantasize about cutting newspaper margin expectations to something under 10%, but the way the world works makes it impossible. Journalists need to understand this and quit wasting time talking about it.

What Mr. Alexander doesn't address is that newspaper chains may be on the verge of dying anyway, since their readership is falling, advertising pages are already on the slide, and intelligent, young news consumers are jumping to free online sources of news already. If the chains do not start living up to their responsibility under the First Amendment, they may as well go out of business and stop wasting the trees on their pathetic print products anyway.