WaPo sale

The Wash. Post is to be sold to Jeff Bezos for $250 million. For anyone even slightly familiar with the paper's history, this must come as a shock (at least it did to me).

(Early) New Year's Resolutions (1): Subscribe to an old-fashioned, hard-copy newspaper

I used to get the daily Washington Post, but I haven't subscribed to it for a long time, because: 1) I get my news in other ways; and 2) I kept thinking I was about to leave the area. Reason (1) still holds, but (2) hasn't occurred (i.e., I'm still here), so come 2009 I may very well start subscribing again.

Why? Because the newspaper industry is in trouble -- witness the bankruptcy filing today of Tribune Co. -- and I don't want newspapers to go out of existence. Call me sentimental, I don't care. If every consumer decision were made on the basis of pure rational calculation, society would be worse for it. So strike a blow against homo economicus, wherever you live, and if you don't get a real, hard-copy, old-fashioned newspaper delivered to your door every day, consider starting. It's too late to save a lot of newspapers, but some of them should survive -- and survive in real, tangible form, as things you can pick up and read without having to turn on the computer and look at the screen.