What a daily newspaper really needs.

I was led to an insightful column by Journal Inquirer editor Chris Powell by Steve Collins at the always informative BristolToday blog.

Powell's conclusion about what daily newspapers need, is not a bailout, but "literate and self-sufficient residents," otherwise known as "readers."

He writes:

Newspapers don't need tax breaks. They need what the state itself needs, a middle class – self-sufficient households with two parents who are involved with their kids, schools, churches, civic groups, and such, interests that attach people to community and thus, almost inevitably, to newspapers, the chroniclers of community. The decline of newspapers reflects community disintegration. That's the problem Connecticut's legislators should be working on, but they don't even see it yet.