What's the worst part of the decline of newspapers? Oh maybe it's all the innocent people who will DIE. Every time you don't buy a paper you practically slip the noose around a condemned man's neck!

Lawyerly types who work on trying to get innocent people freed from death row say that the fewer newspapers and reporters there are, the harder it is for them to find journalists who will work on stories about people wrongly jailed. Which is undoubtedly true! Just like there are fewer newspaper journalists to work on every other type of story that exists.

But strangely, the main complaint of the lawyers quoted in this story is how hard it is for them to find media outlets willing to join their cases as plaintiffs—something that has nothing to do with reporters, and everything to do with executives.

Anyhow, file this away with the other consequences of the decline of newspapers: fewer staffers to put some real thought into writing up your wedding announcement; fewer full-time Pet Beat reporters to cover kittens, and their cuteness; and the increasing chance that the reporter that lives next door to you may have to relocate to a cheaper house, meaning nobody will be there to alert you when your house catches afire as you sleep, and you burn up.
[NYT. Pic via]