This is the fifth and final blog post in a series of guest posts on the future of news by former staff of the Rocky Mountain News, marking the six-month anniversary since the 150-year-old paper published its final edition.

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When I was a student at the University of Denver, Chancellor Maurice Mitchell shared with me his theory of the evolution of media. He believed that the more intimate medium would inevitably supplant the less. Thus, the extremely portable 35 mm camera led to large format magazines like Life and Look, which replaced the text-based magazines like Colliers. Television, in turn, ruined the large format mags. That conversation took place more than 40 years ago, but I'm convinced Mitchell was right. It took a while, but 24-hour cable news and the internet have taken their toll on newspapers.

Those of us whose careers have been cut short by the demise of the Rocky and the cutbacks at other papers have been justifiably critical of newspaper management for not responding aggressively to the reshaping of the media landscape, but I wonder if we haven't been a little too harsh. Buggy whip manufacturers may well have seen the end coming when the automobile arrived, but it's hard to know how they could have saved their industry. The truth is, there's no way for newspapers to recover the ad revenue lost to other venues, or to reclaim their power with readers who have access to so many other choices.

I find myself wondering how the health care debate would play out if newspapers were still the dominant news source, and equally, whether this country ever would have passed Social Security or Medicare if the shouting heads of cable TV and the insidious disinformation of the internet had been in play then.

The sad truth is that, even if newspapers, with budget cuts, restructuring, and more aggressive use of social networking tools and video, find a way to remain profitable, they have lost forever their pre-eminent position as public persuaders. I've seen this coming in my own journalistic niche. When I first joined the Association of Editorial Cartoonists, our annual meetings were attended by senators and congressmen eager to have our ears. We routinely were invited to the White House when we convened in Washington. The men and women in power feared our pens. Now they fear Jon Stewart.

I don't know what the future holds for our profession. Perhaps the printed word will rise again in triumph. Or maybe the New York Times or the Washington Post or some unexpected player will find create a new, hybrid multimedia form of journalism that will have the power newspapers used to wield. And maybe in that mythical medium my caricatures will again make the movers and shakers quake. They'd better hurry. I'm not getting any younger.