Democracy doesn't stand a chance without newspapers

Since time immemorial, whenever things got bad, everyone from political wags to barroom philosophers has declared that the end is near.
Among the more frequent refrains, particularly among popular pundits, has been the downfall of the United States of America.
It is a recurring theme that normally surfaces around times of economic recession, but also can be heard from one political party after the other wins a presidential election.
President Bill Clinton stripped away our expectation for even a modicum of decency from our elected officials.
President George W. Bush is accused of trying to bring about the destruction of the middle class.
And now, less than 100 days into his presidency, Barack Obama is considered by some to be presiding over the end of our nation as we know it.
For the past century, or at least the half-century that I've been around, folks have been talking about how the Roman Empire didn't last forever.
I graduated from high school in 1976 and of those years I can remember reading editorials in newspapers and magazine articles about how we might as well enjoy our bicentennial because it was the beginning of the end for the U.S. of A.
We had our 200-year run and it was good while it lasted, but these are the end times, the doomsayers warned.
But the nattering nabobs of negativism have always discounted one aspect of our democracy that was lacking in Rome: newspapers.
H.G. Wells, in "The Outline of History," writing about the fall of the Roman Empire, observed the following:
"To the modern mind it is clear that a widespread popular government demands, as a necessary condition of health, a steady supply of correct information upon public affairs to all the citizens and a maintenance of interest. The popular governments in the modern states that have sprung up on either side of the Atlantic during the last two centuries have been possible only through the more or less honest and thorough ventilation of public affairs through the press."
Though things are looking pretty bleak right now, I firmly believe we're going to make it through.
The scary thing to me about this latest economic collapse is the impact it is having on newspapers.
I'm with Wells.
If the end of our nation is near, it won't be due to an imaginary historical clock.
But because too many of us seem to think we can survive without newspapers and the protection they afford us.