David McElroy

When are newspapers going to give up and quit printing? For four southern daily newspapers, they’re already halfway there, according to announcements this week.

The four newspapers — all owned by the Newhouse chain — are going to quit printing every day. Instead, they’re just going to print on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. The papers include the New Orleans Times-Picayue, The Birmingham News, The Huntsville (Ala.) Times and the Mobile (Ala.) Press-Register. The companies claim they’re going to have better coverage on the days they still print and they’re going to have improved online coverage as well.

Until I see the new products, I’ll withhold judgment about whether they can make it or not. I’ll just say that I suspect we’re going to start seeing similar “crazy” experiments from papers across the country.

I’m a former newspaper editor and publisher, so you’d think I would feel nostalgia to see things headed this direction, but I don’t. I got out of the business 20 years ago, and I haven’t bought a paper copy in years and years.

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In honor of the publication of an ebook of cat cartoons by my cartoonist friend, Tom Briscoe, all of today’s funnies are related to cats. I also recommend you take a look at Tom’s lighthearted $2.99 Kindle ebook, “99 Reasons to Hate Cats.” Whether you love ’em or hate ’em, you’ll find plenty in there to recognize and chuckle about, especially if you’ve lived closely with felines.

If you’ve ever seen a cat carefully studying a jump for awhile before executing the maneuver, you might wonder what’s going through his mind. Now you know.

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Barack Obama seems determined to make profit a dirty word. In attacking Mitt Romney’s business background, he’s making it clear that he has contempt for the free market that created the long-term national prosperity that he’s spent nearly four years helping to destroy.

Speaking in Iowa Thursday, Obama spoke of private equity firms — such as Bain Capital, Romney’s former company — as having motives other than job creation, as though that’s a bad thing.

“The people who work in these firms will tell you [job creation is] not their goal,” Obama said. He added that the companies’ goal is “maximizing short-term gains for your investors. There may be value for that type of experience but it’s not in the White House.”

Let’s review this. It’s business that generates the wealth of the nation on a long-term basis. Right now, business is in serious trouble, partly because of mistakes made by the business community, but even more so because of government interference that’s destroying the economy and manipulating markets. And even though the country desperately needs business to rebound and start growing again — as Obama would be the first to admit — he is clueless enough to claim it’s a liability for a presidential candidate to have experience in the private sector with making money? Is he insane or just dishonest?

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