I just canceled my newspaper subscription. It was a hard decision for someone who has been reading newspapers for most of his life. Also, I am so conditoned to holding a paper in my hands that I wasn't sure I would be satisfied reading it on line, but ... I am. I used the money I saved to upgrade my Internet connection to the highest speed offered. Sooner or later I had to come into the 21st century.

I would like to keep my newspaper subscriptions, though the decision is becoming harder and harder to justify. I still read two or three papers a day in print form, though I am poorly served by their imbalance and sins of omission. Oh well. We tried to tell 'em.

By the way, my letters to the editor and guest-column submissions to The Tennessean -- pertaining to immigration issues and related state legislation -- are regularly censored out of the paper. So some of you can stop e-mailing me and demanding I respond to some outrage reported in or committed by The Tennessean. I tried, baby. It ain't gettin' in.

I dunno. I think it'll be like AM radio (or even wired money transfers), it will still survive in some form, just not something we'd recognise today.

Imagine telling a 16 year old teenybopper in the early Sixties that AM radio would only be talk radio and sports shows. And that everyone would have, in essence, their own personal radio station worn around their belt. All hits, no commercials!

Mike, I hate to see the younger generations' lack of interest in newspapers, despite how sorry papers are today. My kids are in their thirties and no longer have subscriptions to any newspaper. My son's last subscription was one I bought for him. He didn't renew it.

My kids say they don't have time to read newspapers. I believe it. One of my kids works two jobs, and the other works 60 to 70 hours a week at his one job and has small children to care for on top of that. They do read some news online, and they've observed their advocate mom's experiences with today's opposite-advocate journalism. My kids don't think they're missing anything.

My daddy used to come in exhausted from his ironworker job every afternoon and immediately sit down and read the local newspaper, front to back. It was important to him. He had regular hours, thanks to the union, and time for such rituals. My kids don't have that at all. Plus, they suffer from information overload in their jobs and don't want to deal with any more.