The news keeps getting worse for newspaper journalists and the communities that depend on their daily papers for local coverage. Across the country, newspapers are trying to maintain their high profit margins by slashing newsroom jobs and news coverage.Last month, the Star-Ledger, the largest newspaper in New Jersey, became the latest paper to scale back its newsroom operation. The paper announced plans to lay off 40 percent of its staff. The Los Angeles Times laid off another 75 journalists.

Over the next week, a carload of independent journalists will be winding their way through the South, perhaps one of the only caravans of media-makers not pounding the worn campaign trail. Are they on a beat? You could say that.

Journalists and St. Paul citizens assembled outside St. Paul City Hall Friday to deliver more than 60,000 letters to Mayor Chris Coleman and prosecuting attorneys demanding that they immediately drop charges against all journalists arrested this week as they covered the Republican National Convention.

In St. Paul this week, a new generation of media makers is under assault by the city’s mayor and law enforcement officers.

These local officials think freedom of the press extends only to their allies in mainstream media.For the rest of us, practicing journalism is a crime.