Journalism, for example, taught me concision and clarity—to ensure that, above all, my meaning is understood - and to strive for stories that grip readers in a hurry.

Tom Rachman, you succeeded!

Wonder if TR is aware of ReadUp?

Italicized asides in the book take the reader through fifty years in the history of an English-language newspaper in Rome, from the heyday of the newsroom to its slow decline. What do you think is the fate of the news?

News will exist as long as human beings do: we are too curious and news is too useful. The question is: What form will it take? Print, once so profitable, has been overrun by online sources, which earn little. As Internet readers, we have become habituated to news for free and we rebel when asked to pay. But dwindling income for news organizations means dwindling resources for the reporting we want. While recent innovations—opinion blogs, tweets, and so on—may have value, they often recycle information from other sources rather than adding to the communal pot of knowledge. That said, I'm not worried. Smart people will always distinguish quality from clutter, and they will support insightful news coverage. Quite how that “news” will look, though, remains unclear.