When I was a little girl I would grab the Sunday Newsday and run to the living room in my house. I opened the drapes to the giant window at the back of the house and curl up in the warm sun. I loved to spread out the sections of the paper and pour over them for hours-devouring each one. It breaks my heart to think that future generations might not wash their hands on Sunday mornings and watch the ink go down the drain.

Newspapers offer their content online and allow users to comment on stories. Have you read these comments? They are snarky! Take a look at the Boulder Daily Camera sometime soon. The DC has a skeleton staff and relies quite a bit on interns. Subscriptions are down and advertising is not what it once was. Boulderites are a pretty smart group. They want to read their news online but they aren't taking into account the DC's lack of staff and money.

I agree with Clay Sharky when he talks about our need for journalism. It scares me to think about the future of the industry. I don't think about it in a "yipes-where can I get a job?" kind of way. I think of it as an "oh no-will kids ever get the chance to curl up in the sun to read the paper?" kind of way.

I have no answers about the future of journalism. In my classes, Journalism profs joke that journalists don't typically have math skills. It's likely that we've found ourselves in this situation partially because of that.

Journalists didn't predict the downfall of the industry. If they knew, they all would have planned ahead and charged online readers. My grandma always said "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?" She was a pretty smart lady. Not in the "college-educated Boulder" kind of way-but in the "you've got to think one step ahead" kind of way.

Journalists are in the present, not two steps ahead. To save the industry we'll need to be flexible. We'll also need to think like my grandma always did. We'll need to plan ahead and not give the milk for free.