At one time the only news came from town criers, and as much of the population was illiterate, that's all that worked. Town criers were opinionated, and their success depended on the generoosity of their audience and the leniency of the state.

Eventually, enough of the population could read and write, and newspapers flourished. Many cities had several newspapers, as it was the only medium for mass information transfer, town criers having "died off." Again, opinions governed the news presented by commercial newspapers as each newspaper sought audiences for their messages and sponsoring advertisements.

Then radio came along, and it's entertainment value soon became supplemented with its news delivery capacity. As commercial as newspapers, radio stations and networks had the same audience capture problems, and used structured bias to garner market segments.

Lo and behold, television joined the fray. TV evolved through cable and personal satellite receivers to provide near-time reporting of news, but proved to be just as biased in order to be commercially successful.

The bottom line is, where newspapers had flourished as being alone in the public information business, competition from other media sliced into the newspaper's monopoly, and newspapers - as any business with a shrinking customer base - started to cease operations due to that natural business phenomenon, competition.

Now the Internet appeareth. A new competitor for the public information delivery business. It delivers information faster than newspapers and from multiple sources. It too has bias in its sources. It costs less than newspapers, too.

Sometime in the future, the Internet will find itself facing a new competitor for access to human curiosity market. Innovation creates change.

So, just like companies making buggywhips, stagecoaches and dial-type telephones, the newspaper companies find themselves having to adapt to a technologically changing and ever-demanding customer base - or cease to exist. Their evolution, in the face of an ever-shrinking market, is inevitable.