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For those of you who oppose the public plan on the grounds that it smacks of socialism, or for the philosophic reason that government shouldn’t compete in the marketplace, I suggest you read this article about how the insurance exchanges being promoted as part of health care reform actually performed in the states they were tried.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06mcgarr.html

Without giving away too much of the punch line, it turns out that any way you do it, government intervention is an unavoidable ingredient. Private for-profit insurance companies will never create the level playing field required for universal health care without being forced to by law–in other words, by the government.

Today is the six-month anniversary of the last edition of the Rocky Mountain News. I was asked to contribute my thoughts on the future of my profession to a blog series. there will be a live chat today at 3 pm at http://www.savethenews.org/Denverchat . You might want to log on and hear what other former Rocky folks have to say.

When I was a student at the University of Denver, Chancellor Maurice Mitchell shared with me his theory of the evolution of media. He believed that the more intimate medium would inevitably supplant the less. Thus, the extremely portable 35 mm camera led to large format magazines like Life and Look, which replaced the text-based magazines like Colliers. Television, in turn, ruined the large format mags. That conversation took place more than 40 years ago, but I’m convinced Mitchell was right. It took a while, but 24-hour cable news and the internet have taken their toll on newspapers.

Those of us whose careers have been cut short by the demise of the Rocky and the cutbacks at other papers have been justifiably critical of newspaper management for not responding aggressively to the reshaping of the media landscape, but I wonder if we haven’t been a little too harsh. Buggy whip manufacturers may well have seen the end coming when the automobile arrived, but it’s hard to know how they could have saved their industry. The truth is, there’s no way for newspapers to recover the ad revenue lost to other venues, or to reclaim their power with readers who have access to so many other choices.

I find myself wondering how the health care debate would play out if newspapers were still the dominant news source, and equally, whether this country ever would have passed Social Security or Medicare if the shouting heads of cable tv and the insidious disinformation of the internet had been in play then.

The sad truth is that, even if newspapers, with budget cuts, restructuring, and more aggressive use of social networking tools and video, find a way to remain profitable, they have lost forever their pre-eminent position as public persuaders. I’ve seen this coming in my own journalistic niche. When I first joined the Association of Editorial Cartoonists, our annual meetings were attended by senators and congressmen eager to have out ears. We routinely were invited to the White House when we convened in Washington. The men and women in power feared our pens. Now they fear Jon Stewart.

I don’t know what the future holds for our profession. Perhaps the printed word will rise again in triumph. Or maybe the New York Times or the Washington Post or some unexpected player will create a new, hybrid multimedia form of journalism that will have the power newspapers used to wield. And maybe in that mythical medium my caricatures will again make the movers and shakers quake. They’d better hurry. I’m not getting any younger.

Many readers of this blog have expressed strong opinions about health care reform. Some of you seem reasonably well informed, but many are woefully ignorant either of what reform really means or of how the rest of the world handles their systems. I think it’s time you read what someone who actually knows what he’s talking about has to say. T.R. Reid, long-time foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, has been around the world studying how different countries manage their health care systems, and his findings will surprise many of you. I encourage you to read his story in today’s Washington Post at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html.

The article is really a condensed version of his excellent book, The Healing of America, which I also encourage you to read. In clear, coherent language, he clears up many of the myths surrounding health care reform, and shows the many ways other countries have made affordable health care accessible to their citizens. He doesn’t advocate any specific approach, and he also shows the downsides of the systems other countries have developed. It’s a must-read book for anyone concerned about this nation’s health care.