Given the cutting at The Denver Post and fears that the Rocky Mountain News could soon be shuttered (as I noted yesterday), I've assembled some food for thought in hopes that somebody with money and a sense of civic responsibility might be reading this. Let's start with Salon, which laments the "death of news" at the dawn of the Information Age, an article that wonders who exactly will carry out the thankless gumshoe reporting if newspapers fade away. Joe Matthews, a newspaperman, writes an elegy for ink and paper in The New Republic: "With fewer watchdogs, you get less barking. How can we know what we'll never know? What stories are we missing?" Meanwhile, Reason magazine explores one hopeful beacon, Politico, the must-read in Washington, D.C. that is seeing some success in sustaining its aggressive, Internet-focused news model. Or consider an article from The Associated Press, which reports an idea that has yet to be espoused in Denver: A newspaper guild is set to discuss whether employees in Seattle, also currently a two-newspaper town, can buy the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.