Newspapers, like the economy, are currently reacting to our nation’s and world’s financial stresses. Nationally, job losses are exceeding the administration’s expectations. The results of the president’s debt-ridden stimulus program, rife with the smell of frying bacon as it greased through Congress last winter, are in doubt.

Were enough shovel-ready projects included in the old pork barrel in order to get the economy moving again? Do such measures actually work over the long haul? Who knows? Historically business crashes, credit crashes, recessions and other messes have a way of righting themselves if given time, providing we don’t bog ourselves down with too much government involvement.

In the meanwhile, businesses, everyday citizens, the self-employed and even newspapers suffer. Everyone it seems but government employees are feeling it in their pocketbooks. Some of them even find new ways to inconvenience the public. Perhaps that is fodder for another column, soon. Meanwhile back to newspapers.

I think most would agree that the three newspapers that have the greatest national influence are The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. You see these newspapers, sometimes all three, in the offices of governmental and business leaders. They are now available online, as well. I’m just a local businessman, but even I try to at least scan The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times daily.

There are other papers that contend for national influence – The Washington Times, The Christian Science Monitor and Investors Business Daily Come to mind – but the New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are still very influential. They are often quoted in public speeches by everyone from our teleprompter-controlled president to whichever irresponsible CEO is seeking public assistance.

All satire aside, our nation is faced with some serious issues. Our president and Democrat-controlled Congress are proposing to change the very nature of our Republic as part of their solutions to various issues. There is the current crisis to abuse, after all....

Barack Hussein Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel stated after the election that you could not let a good crisis go to waste. Hillary Clinton even screeched out similar sounds while addressing a group of European leaders in one of her first trips overseas. I guess it’s just so cute to tell the European leaders you are fawning over that you are fleecing your own voters and taxpayers back home. This era is starting to remind some of us who have read their history of the heady days of Marie Antoinette.

Back to our most influential newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post generally are considered to have a liberal viewpoint, The Wall Street Journal a more conservative one. All three papers’ opinion pages seem increasingly distant from the concerns of average Americans. I think these news organs are becoming irrelevant to even their most loyal following, politicians and policy makers.

Why is this true? Who knows? I think lazy reporting is one issue. Opinion writing that has the tone of coming down to us taxpaying poltroons from Mount Olympus might be another. Internet access to livelier and meatier reporting and editorializing is also playing a role – from Salon to LewRockwell.com and various places in between and beyond; I suspect that includes regional and local newspapers online, as well.

In short, the news cycle is fragmenting. Does that mean there is more false information available? Yes, it does. It also ups the odds that the truth is out there to be ferreted out by a careful reader and that something more interesting, often more truthful, than what is shared from the rarified mists of the high ether, is available as well. The would-be media gods from the tallest mountains are, of course, being driven crazy by this. In response, The Washington Post, the former venerable voice of the our nation’s governmental establishment, earlier this week decided to sell its influence like a common street strumpet.

That’s right. The Washington Post was going to sell a position as both a news organ and purveyor of influence like a prostitute. The price was high; we are talking higher than a philandering long-legged rental for Eliot Spitzer. For as much as 250 large – that’s $250, 000 for those of you not familiar with organized crime talk – you could meet with President Obama’s officials, various congressmen and/or those "powerful few" who increasingly plan our lives, at the bordello – make that home of Washington Post publisher Madame Katharine Weymouth.

Now, Eliot Spitzer’s high-dollar companions advertised on the internet. That fact and a few hotel bills are the reason the former New York guv is a former New York guv. Preceding his short tenure as New York’s head of state, Eliot served as New York attorney general and was known for busting prostitution rings. As with so many of the big boys, it seems the laws are for the little people, not themselves.

Meanwhile back at the bordello, it appears after being shamed, ironically by the online news organ Politico, that Madame Weymouth of The Washington Post has decided not pursue the world’s oldest profession and has withdrawn all offers of renting influence, at least officially, at the bordello.