A good — but disillusioned — friend in the business said this is how the center will fail. Newspaper companies will try to keep eyeballs and advertisers by investing in the Web. But a medium that was born free and has been ingenious in staying that way may or may not ever make enough money to sustain the kind of journalism it would replace.

Coverage will trend toward local-lite — ignoring the world, avoiding uncomfortable positions and only paying serious attention to the community issues that sell.

In the process, thoughtful readers and true journalistic talent will have little reason to stay. And the talent that stays will worry more about winning prizes than serving readers because prizes are the path to the very top of a dwindling pyramid of real reporting.

As he talked about this downward spiral in essentialness of the American newspaper, I realized there is nobody to blame because it is nobody's fault. You don't blame cell phones when you can't find a phone booth. It's simply the onslaught of technology and the inevitability of consumer choice. We've seen it before. But this time there is more at stake. I worry about the quality of debate. I worry about the truth. I worry about a community's ability to examine itself. I worry about the abuse of power when nobody is watching. I worry about losing the sheer enjoyment of great writing and reporting. But most of all, I just feel sad.

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Peggy Drexler is an assistant professor of psychology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. E-mail her at peggy@peggydrexler.com.