According to the Knight Citizens News Network, web sites like this one represent a big part of the future of community journalism. I'm flattered that they chose to feature Blue Ridge Muse as part of their "learning modules" but I'm not sure how a 61-year-old ink-stained newspaperman ended up as an example of the "new media."

God knows the print media that has been a major part of so much of my adult life is fading away. The Journal Register Company is shutting down several of its weekly newspapers, effective immediately.  The Tribune Co., owner of The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, is in bankruptcy.  In Detroit, the newspapers cut their home delivery to just three days a week. Some newspapers have closed down their print operations and now deliver news only on the Internet.

A Pew Research Center study during the 2008 Presidential campaign revealed that most Americans get their political news from television and the Internet.

For someone who still writes for a newspaper, this is a bitter pill. But I also publish a political news web site that has been on the Web since 1994 and have far more readers there than the combined circulations of all the newspapers I've worked for during the last 43 years.

The times, they are a-changing.