Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand however is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands it also seldom works properly.

In my view far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting the New York Times the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.

I've thought for the last decade or so the only actual place raw truth was seeping through in newspapers was on the Comics Pages. They were able to pull off intelligent social comment pure truths not found elsewhere in the news pages and had the ability to make it all funny entertaining and pertinent.

If newspapers were a baseball team they would be the Mets - without the hope for those folks at the very pinnacle of the financial food chain - who average nearly $24 million a year in income - 'next year.'

Chronic malnutrition or the lack of proper nutrition over time directly contributes to three times as many child deaths as food scarcity. Yet surprisingly you don't really hear about this hidden crisis through the morning news Twitter or headlines of major newspapers.

I would rather exercise than read a newspaper.