Worst news of the week: 'Detroit newspapers may sharply cut home delivery'

Why do I care so much about what's going down — literally and figuratively — in the Motor City?

Because what's happening there is the canary in the coal mine for those few of us antediluvian, atavistic and anachronistic readers who still think there's nothing like the real thing, inked dead tree matter sitting in our driveways or newspaper boxes every morning, placed there in the wee hours by elves we never see.

It's just not the same thing on a screen, besides which I can't tear out the articles for later posting and reference.

I guess I should've realized the type was on the wall when the Washington Post recently threw its own home delivery network under the bus, instead contracting it out to my Podunk town's Charlottesville Daily Progress's delivery people.

I must've been asleep at the switch.

Of course, I could always blame my crack research team for missing the significance of the Post's move, just as surgeons routinely remark "It's anesthesia's fault" whenever they encounter intraoperative problems.

But I digress.

The hoofbeats are getting louder every day, so much so that it seems to me a matter of months, not years, before the equivalent of "The Last Wave" hits U.S. newpapers and washes them all away.

I keep imploring a certain New York Times freelancer (she knows who she is so I won't embarrass her any more than I already have) to get her eponymous website up and running while she still has a print base but she's like me, a procrastinator who doesn't want to do something that frankly is a big pain in the butt at first, instead replying to a recent email from me that "I'm not letting checks from the Times gather dust."

Come on, girlfriend — it's time.