Another reason to be worried about democracy: The Los Angeles Times forced out its top editor over the weekend -- the fourth time in three years that has happened.

James O'Shea left for the same reasons his predecessors did: He didn't want to make massive cuts to the newsroom budget. Especially not in a presidential campaign year.

The newspaper business, trust me, it's a tough racket. Across the United States, venerable news organizations are struggling to figure out how to adapt a very old model to a new and ever-changing market. The readers, they are a-changing.

The New York Times on Monday covers the demise of the Cincinnati Post. I was particularly struck by the two paragraphs at the very end of the piece:

Last Thursday, William Mallory Sr., a former state legislator and the father of Cincinnati’s mayor, paid tribute to The Post by passing out free copies on the steps of city hall, where he had sold it as paperboy in the 1940s.