predictions

"When a newspaper dies in America, it is not simply that a commercial enterprise has failed.  If the San Francisco Chronicle is near death – and why else would the editors celebrate it 144th anniversary? and why else would editors devote a week to feature articles on fog? – it is because San Francisco's sense of itself as a city is perishing...
We will end up with one and a half cities in America – Washington, D.C., and American Idol.  We will all live in Washington, D.C., where the conversation is a droning, never advancing, debate between 'conservatives' and 'liberals.'  We will not read about newlyweds.  We will not read about the deaths of salesmen.  We will not read about prize Holsteins or new novels.  We are a nation dismantling the structure of intellectual property and all critical apparatus."

               - Richard Rodriguez, "Final Edition: Twilight of the American newspaper," Harper's, Nov. 2009

In this same article, I learned that the word "hoodlum" was coined in San Francisco.  Neat!  Of course (of course), I'm hoping he's wrong.