I’d already been planning to mention Tuesday’s “Democracy Now!” piece on the sorry state of the newspaper industry … widespread layoffs, drastic cuts in coverage and newshole, plunging stock prices with Wall Street devaluing the entire industry. Profit margins continue to be perfectly respectable, but because they aren’t as obscene as they had been in the past, newspapers are considered a sinking ship.

Most of this national trend is reflected in the sad state of the local newspaper, but so far my former employer had managed to dodge the layoff question.

Until Wednesday, when it laid off 16 employees – including eight in the newsroom. A great deal of knowledge, talent and skill is being given up in the name of profits. And the way in which it was handled was tacky, as is typical for that operation. Meanwhile, excellent workers left behind in a newsroom where morale is already low are made paranoid, for this likely is just the beginning.

Devaluing everything they espouse to promote: Attention to “local-local” coverage that can’t be found anywhere else; attention to detail in the eyes of that dying breed, the copy editor. Combined with drastic cuts earlier this summer in space for nation/world and local news, it almost seems as if the LJS is trying to put itself out of business.

Before the downward spiral started a little over a year ago, the stock price for Lee Enterprises, which owns the local “product” (they don’t like to refer to “news” nowadays, which should tell you something) routinely traded in the $30-$35 range and sometimes went as high as $40. As of this morning, Lee stock was trading at $3.20 (up from $2.98 a few days ago). One Wall Street blog puts 1 in 8 odds on Lee declaring bankruptcy by year's end.

Industrywide, the crisis is obvious terms of both international news – nearly all of the major players have slashed their foreign correspondent staffs, and the Boston Globe shut its international division down entirely – and in local news, which can be devastating to towns in which the local newspaper is the sole source of news that is more than an official press release.

Journalism once was considered the Fourth Estate, a nongovernmental check on the executive, legislative and judicial branches, without which a healthy democracy could not function. That’s not a view shared by the average American these days. But when there are no more journalists looking for the story behind the sound bite, we’ll all suffer the consequences.

And when there are no legitimate investigative news outlets left operating, who will the blogosphere plagiarize from?

Here are a couple of really good recent pieces on the woes of the newspaper industry:

At Truthdig: “Bad Days for Newsrooms -- and Democracy”

From Eric Alterman at The Nation: "I Read the News Today ... Oh Boy"

Wish I could stand in solidarity with my colleagues who haven’t yet given up hope, but the truth is I’m glad I jumped ship. I’m embarrassed to be associated with the current state of mainstream journalism, locally and nationally.

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Currently reading: "This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation" by Barbara Ehrenreich

Currently hearing: "Allegria," The Gipsy Kings