Does Barack Obama Hate Our Important Newspapers?

It was another grim week for the newspaper business, with lesser-known newspapers closing down to little notice or consequence, even as our most important newspapers experienced the bitter sting of salary freezes and a few layoffs.

As the forces of modern corporate anti-newspaper life continue to wreak havoc on the very skeleton of our democracy and our nation, a new Enemy Within has been discovered -- and he is within the White House press briefing room.

He is the president himself, and also his press secretary. These two Americans, if you can call them that, are single-handedly destroying what is literally the only thing worth saving in America: newspaper printed on tree pulp.


First, the tally of regional newspapers shut down as a result of the financial banking scandal and "what me worry" attitudes of young idiots who do not understand the necessity of having to find a soggy newspaper full of three-day-old AP stories and "going out of business" furniture store advertisements in the neighbor's driveway each morning: The presses at the Rocky Mountain News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tuscon Citizen, Christian Science Monitor, and LA CityBeat have all been shuttered in recent weeks.

You may not be familiar with these newspapers, but chances are they employed many of our younger print journalists, working hard for that "step up" to the big leagues. These shuttered newspapers surely served their particular communities in some way. Even the hip-hop newspaper, The Blender, has gone out of business -- what will inner-city children read now? Nothing.

We have been down this road before.

The most tragic news about the business of newspapering, this week, came from the corporate offices of two of our nation's finest newspapers, the New York Times and of course the Washington Post. For whatever reason, there will be some layoffs, and a devastating 5% pay cut for those who remain. The job cuts will mostly come from the production and online divisions, thank goodness, but one mustn't be paranoid to consider the likelihood that even the Washington Post newsroom may someday see blood.

It was Thomas Jefferson, himself a resident of Washington at one point, who asked the stirring question which launched the American Revolution: "Whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government?" He chose America.

One wonders about the choices being weighed within the secret rooms of the White House where this new president, Barack Obama, and his sinister press secretary scheme within a darkness unilluminated by newspapers.

Last week, this president -- a mere child in diapers when my generation was enjoying civil rights and the Beatles -- hosted a press conference that was a vulgar deformation of the term. Instead of taking questions from the White House reporters from our most important newspapers, Obama led a rudderless free-for-all in which seemingly any miscreant who wandered in off the street could pose a question to the leader of the free world.

As the nation waited in increasing agitation for America's president to converse with our best journalists, he gleefully pointed to almost anyone -- a Mexican, a military reporter! -- until, spent by this frenzy, he turned away from the gathered Fourth Estate and strode down the hall. I simply do not care for his attitude.

Asked later about this outrage, press secretary Robert Gibbs snidely mocked the professional journalist who so proudly demanded an answer as to why this new president had disrupted a well-established pecking order so crucial to democracy.

Offered a follow-up question, this White House correspondent for none other than the Washington Post demanded to know why, behind America's back, this administration had apparently changed either the model or location of the "teleprompter," which is a machine presidents and anchormen use to read their important remarks.

Gibbs did nothing short of attacking this newspaper reporter for asking the hard questions. Was she a woman? Yes, but that is hardly an excuse to make a fool of someone, at least when they work for an important newspaper.

Here's an idea for these interlopers running wild in the White House: Make this president read his prepared remarks from a printed newspaper. Only then might America realize the slippery slope on which it slides upon.

Ken Layne is a syndicated columnist for the Washington political publication Wonkette.