I've realised that I've been looking a lot at what's been happening in the US newspaper industry.
That's partly because that's where papers are really suffering at the moment. It's also because through Twitter I've discovered a lot of smart people in the States who are talking about what the decline of the traditional newspaper model means for journalism and how the traditional media companies there are failing to deal with the changing times.
But I saw something this week which confirms that media companies on this side of the Atlantic are just as short-sighted and uncaring about the communities they serve.
Across central Scotland Trinity Mirror is closing local newspaper offices and merging production centres. One of the papers affected is the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser.
This is one of the papers I grew up with. It would be delivered to my gran's house in Plains every week, full of local news: everything from the latest carry-on at Monklands District Council, to the real parish pump stuff from the villages. As kids, we'd look at the Sammy Squirrel page to see whose parents had stumped up the cash for them to have a photo and birthday greeting printed in the paper.
The Advertiser is a good local paper, providing a real community service. It's well-known for its campaigning journalism, with the best example maybe being the campaign to save A&E services at Monklands District Hospital - a campaign it led from the front, and won.
Now the office in Coatbridge is being closed. No doubt the Airdrie office won't be far behind. What effect will that have on reporters' ability to create links in the community? Especially juniors starting out who need to quickly make contacts? What message does it send to the communities that Trinity Mirror says it's proud to serve?
And what can we say about a media company whose investment in community engagement using the internet amounts to: Our users have posted a total of 49 articles. We have 28 registered users.
This is a company, by the way, which - despite the downturn in advertising - still managed to make a profit of nearly £70 million in 2007. In 2005 it was more than £110 million.
If Trinity Mirror executives invested a tenth of that cash in creating easy-to-use online tools that communities could use to get involved in the news-making process, the company and the communities would be far better served. But, of course, that's not why these people are in the newspaper business.
Meanwhile, I was pleased to see that John Naughton has taken to Ubuntu. Open Source Software: liberating the world one desktop at a time.