Dave Barry on newspaper industry

I love Dave Barry but I haven't thought of him in years. Here's part of a column called "Get me rewrite!" he wrote for the Miami Herald in 2001 but was re-run in yesterday's Herald. I particularly love his suggestion for a paper's cost-cutting motto: "All the News That."

yada, yada, yada ...

The newspaper industry spread to America, where, by the 20th century, virtually every town had a locally owned newspaper with a name like The Chronic Prevaricator or The Register-Sphincter, which kept the community abreast of local politics (''City Council Attacked by Pig'') as well as national issues (''Strom Thurmond Still Alive''). These were family operations run by people who were less concerned about making large profits than about keeping their body parts out of the presses.

But in the past few decades, all of these newspapers were purchased by large corporations, which were in turn purchased by larger corporations, and so on, so that today the entire American newspaper industry has been glommed together into one giant media conglomerate owned by Wall Street, which frankly does not care what your city council did. What Wall Street cares about is profits. Here at the newspaper, we get hourly phone calls from Wall Street.

''Send more profits!'' Wall Street shouts, then slams down the receiver.

We must comply, because otherwise Wall Street would shut down the newspaper and we would starve to death, because, as English majors, we have no useful skills.

I believe we do have useful skills - we just don't want to employ them. We'll even deny we have them, if necessary. "I know nothing about QuickBooks," for example.