Because they have suddenly shifted radically left in their coverage, and readers are rejecting it. That's why he's happy.

That theory doesn't sync with the thinking of most sensible people in the media who understand the industry is going through massive macro changes, and that many Americans--particularly the young--are permanently changing their reading habits away from newspapers and magazines. Not because of political leanings, mind you, but because the generally free technology of the Web trumps the tradition of carbon-based, physically distributed media every time.

Not to mention the deleterious effects of an ever-greedy Wall Street, phenomenally irresponsible corporate ownership and the press' own efforts to destroy any remaining trust the public may have in their reportage. But to Shields, "there's another interesting aspect to O'Reilly's anti-newspaper diatribe":

During this horrid economic cycle, when millions of Americans are out of jobs and terrified about their future employment prospects, rooting for American businesses to go under seems way out of touch to me, especially for a commentator who's constantly talking about sticking up for regular "folks." It kind of sounds, well, un-American.

Pelosi's request sounds innocuous at first--after all, struggling newspapers seem to need all the help they can get. But opening the door to more media consolidation is not the cure for the crisis in journalism. More of this bad medicine will only weaken reporting and worsen the health of our democracy.

As a few big companies swallowed up more local media outlets, they gutted newsrooms. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that the industry lost 5,000 journalists last year and has slashed 16 percent of its news staff since 2001. Is it any surprise that fewer people are buying newspapers when reporters are being taken off their beats and bureaus are being shuttered?

But media consolidation hasn't been a disaster only for dedicated journalists or the public who rely on reporters to keep an eye on their leaders. It's also been bad for business.

Just a few years ago, the average profit margin for newspapers was over 20 percent--with some bringing in twice as much or more. But that did not satisfy the newspaper executives or Wall Street. Instead of investing in the quality of their products and innovating for the future, the big media companies have been obsessed with short-term gains. Instead of bolstering their news-gathering or adjusting to the new media landscape, companies like McClatchy, Tribune and Lee Enterprises used these astronomical profits to buy up other properties.

And of course, throughout this process, "federal regulators rubber-stamped these mega-mergers," even though "the media giants took on massive amounts of debt."

When I was president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, we started a whole program to change the coverage of Latinos and hire more Latinos around the country, and the Rocky Mountain News was the first paper that we worked with back in 2003.

And it was extraordinary, the change that the paper made in its coverage of the Latino community in Colorado, in its hiring. It started out with a mere, I think, 11 Hispanics in the newsroom, out of 204. Within a year, they had more than doubled the number. They changed the coverage. We held town meetings in the community, and the community was telling us, yes, this paper was finally changing.

And it even hired the first Native American journalist at that paper. And that’s especially important, because those who don’t know Colorado history won’t know that the Rocky Mountain News has a notorious history back in the 19h century, when it really stoked a massacre, the Sand Creek Massacre, of scores of Native Americans, and it’s always been hated by the Native American community because of that long history. But even there, the Rocky tried to make changes.

While calling it "really tragic that that paper has been lost to the people of Colorado," Gonzalez also is careful when answering Goodman's question, "So, you’re saying in a lot of these cases the newspapers actually are not failing, they are profitable?": "Yes, well, when the Knight chain... was bought out by McClatchy, and, of course, the Inquirer and the Daily News in Philadelphia were part of that deal--the chain was making 15 percent profit a year. It just wasn’t making enough for to satisfy the shareholders."

Read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "'Wall Street Does Not Like Newspapers': CounterSpin Interview with Ben Bagdikian" (5-6/06)

Even as they take blow after blow from recession and digital media, newspapers themselves still earn decent profits....

"Not a lot of papers are operating at a loss," said John Morton, the veteran industry analyst. "There are roughly 1,400 daily newspapers. We only hear about the top markets. That leaves at least 1,300 papers out there."

Publicly owned newspapers averaged an operating profit of 10.8 percent in the first three quarters of last year.

In fact, Ives tells us that, despite "rolling in layoffs," if you don't count "one-time charges such as severance and write-downs," the "country's biggest newspaper publisher, Gannett... produced an 18 percent operating profit margin last year"--proving that "there's no reason for newspapers themselves, whoever owns them, to stop the presses. Most operations are plenty profitable."

The problem with newspapers, as the late Molly Ivins noted, is not how much money they make--it's how much money Wall Street expects them to make.