The High Country News has published an excellent story on the weaknesses of daily newspapers in the West. For instance:

"It’s often said that we’re in some golden Information Age, with more news available than ever before, thanks to cable TV, the Internet, specialty magazines and other burgeoning news sources. But the foundation of the news-gathering system, the daily papers, is shaky.

"No matter how short-staffed they are, the dailies put the most reporters on the ground, and they are the place other news operations go to get the basic facts and look for emerging trends. Yet of the West’s 240 English-language daily papers, only a few do their work well. Most are mediocre, with flashes of good work. Some are downright bad."

The story takes off from the report mentioned here recently by the Institutes of Journalism and Natural Resources in Missoula, but it takes the story much further. Be sure to read far enough to get to the quotes from Michael Milstein, former Billings Gazette reporter now with the Portland Oregonian.

By the way, has anybody seen a story about this study yet in a Montana newspaper? I hope to get my version done for next week's Outpost. Maybe someone has done it, and I just missed it. Or maybe everybody is too short-staffed.