If it's Tuesday, we must be in. . . .

In much of the world, publishers need a license to publish.
Think about that.
A license.
One of the laws the Framers discarded when they wrote our amazing Constitution was the one that licensed publishers. They understood the necessity for free speech and a free press, which means, they appreciated dissent.
Of course, it was a little easier for them to appreciate dissent, since they were professional dissenters themselves.
A country formed from a revolution may belikely to be a little more free, but that doesn't give us the right to be complacent about it.
Free speech is the right from which all other rights are derived.
If that matters as much as it should and, especially, if you teach others for whom it should matter, read Charles Glasser Jr.'s International Media Law. The book describes the variations of law in many countries of the world, but the bottom line is, this is the best place to be a member of the press.
Even now.

A Modest Proposal

Newspapers are folding in random cities around the country. While this may or may not signal the death of American newspapers, there is something newspapers can do to help themselves. Of course, it would require working together, which is not something newspapers do well. Since only large sites like Google and the Huffington Post actually sell ads to support the editorial content, why don't newspapers pull their copy from the Web and just continue to publish on dead trees with advertising to pay for it. Many papers would still be in trouble, but they wouldn't be competing against themselves. I don't know anybody who has actually clicked on an ad on the Internet. I'm not naive enough to expect to make money from this blog. Newspaper publishers should stop fantasizing about making money from Internet advertising and tell their readers, "party is over, if you want to read it, buy it, just like in the old days."